Key Information
Wastewater Based Epidemiology (WBE) is a public health tool that tracks community health trends by analysing sewage samples for biological and chemical markers. It measures things like viruses, medicines, and drug waste in entire neighbourhoods or cities.
Advances in WBE have demonstrated value for monitoring infectious disease, antimicrobial resistance, pharmaceutical consumption, illicit drug use, dietary patterns and environmental contaminants.
The Global Surveillance Gap
The world has advanced epidemiology science but not yet established a coordinated global baseline.
Despite rapid advances in over 55 countries, the global WBE community has never coordinated a simultaneous, standardised sampling effort across multiple continents.
Data from wastewater can offer unique insights into community health at lower cost and higher population coverage than other clinical surveillance. It addresses a data gap which focuses on actual, observed data in communities.
Quote
“Global health threats move faster than our surveillance QUALITATIVE systems. While wastewater monitoring has matured in many countries, the world still lacks a coordinated, standardised mechanism for capturing a simultaneous global snapshot of population health.”
– World Health Organisation (2025) Wastewater and Environmental Surveillance: A global Landscape Analysis.
Global health threats move faster than fragmented surveillance systems
As health, environmental and climate risks become increasingly interconnected, fragmented surveillance systems leave critical gaps in our ability to anticipate and respond to emerging threats.
Our Three Core Missions
Strengthening Pandemic Preparedness - Building global early-warning capabilities to detect, monitor and respond to infectious disease threats before they escalate into outbreaks.
Combating Antimicrobial Resistance - Tracking the emergence and spread of resistance at population scale to support global efforts to address one of the greatest threats to future health security.
Supporting Climate Resilience - Understanding how climate driven pressures impact communities, water systems and public health, enabling more informed adaptation and resilience planning.
A “One Sample, many insights” scientific platform.
A single wastewater sample can generate multiple layers of intelligence, providing an integrated view of human, animal health & ecosystem health.
Public Health Surveillance - Detection of viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens to monitor infectious disease circulation and emerging health threats.
Genomic & Microbial Intelligence - Characterisation of antimicrobial resistance, microbial communities and functional genes to understand pathogen evolution and ecosystem health.
Environmental Quality Monitoring - Assessment of microplastics, heavy metals and key water quality parameters to track environmental pressures and contamination.
Population Health & Behavioural Insights - Analysis of pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs and lifestyle biomarkers to provide anonymised insights into community health and wellbeing.
A world where wastewater intelligence empowers every community with equitable access to the insights needed to protect health, safeguard the environment and build a more resilient future.
We believe that access to timely, high-quality public health insights should be equitable and inclusive. Wherever they are in the world, communities should be able to benefit from the intelligence wastewater can provide.
By fostering collaboration, supporting capacity building and encouraging participation from countries and regions with different resources and capabilities, Global Wastewater Day aims to help reduce inequalities in health surveillance, preparedness and environmental monitoring.
Guided by One Health principles, we recognise that human, animal and environmental health are deeply interconnected. Our network enables partners to contribute to, learn from and benefit from a growing evidence base that can support early warning, informed decision-making and collective responses to emerging challenges.