Objective To explore the health status and regular trend of drinking water quality in rural areas of Anhui province. Methods Drinking water point was monitored in more than 60% of our rural counties in Anhui province, according to the "National Sanitary Surveillance Scheme for Rural Drinking Water Projects ", and each monitoring point was measured in the dry season and wet season, including the product water and the tap water samples. Results A total of 3 174 points were monitored with 53% of complete treatment projects in 2014-2015, with 59.0% disinfection method of the chlorine dioxide disinfection, 16.8% of bleaching powder(16.8%) disinfection. A total of 12 075 tap-water samples with 7 253 eligible samples (eligible rate: 60.1%) were tested in the 2 years.The qualified rate of centralized water supply was the highest, followed by the school supply, and qualified rate of scattered water supply was the lowest (χ²=104.71, P<0.001). The qualified rate of product water was significantly higher than that of tap water (χ²=9.81, P<0.05), and the qualified rate of the dry season was significantly higher than that of the wet season (χ²=47.77,P<0.001), and the qualified rate of surface water was significantly higher than that of groundwater (χ²=54.90,P<0.001). The lowest qualified rate of monitoring index was total coliform bacteria colony (79.1%), followed by thermotolerant coliform bacteria (86.9%) and the total number of colonies (89.4%). Conclusion The low qualified rate of microbial indicators in Anhui province was the main influencing factor on qualified rate of drinking water in rural areas, which was also the potential risk of waterborne infectious diseases and the spread of waterborne diseases.