Forums
Discussion on Current progress of NTD under global and HSTP
Challenges
- Inadequate WASH services to complement gains made in reduction of NTDs through MDA
- WASH investment is costly and need financial resources
- Inadequate domestic resource allocation and mobilization (donor dependency)
- Inadequate leadership and political commitment from lower level government structures
- Human and financial resource shortages at district level for coordination and integration of services
- Lack of capacity of available staffs at lower level structures
- Lack of evidence on WASH coverage threshold required for impacting NTDs
- WASH sector program indicators focus only on access and not on impacting disease prevalence
- Coordination dependent on partners (ownership from government from lower level structure)
- Lack of accountability attached to coordination and integration
Recommendations
- Strengthen already initiated National WASH and NTD coordination and integration and cascade to lower level structures
- Advocacy for political commitment and ownership of WASH and NTD programs including coordination and integration
- Domestic resource allocation for coordination and integration activities
- Human resource assignment for coordination activities at lower level structures
- Integration and coordination within sectors (E.g. Disease Prevention and HEH directorates)
- Integration of NTD and WASH Programs within the Primary Health Care Unit/system
- Advocacy for coordination at source (joint programs/projects for donors)
- Evidence synthesis and sharing for scale up (There are joint programs in multiple areas that need to be documented and shared
- Advocacy for WASH resource prioritization (OWNP) for NTD endemic districts
- Resource for operational research
