Improving Health for everyone through sanitation safety planning

The WHO “Guidelines on Sanitation and Health” provide an overarching framework to guide a stronger and more systemic public health approach to sanitation.

It was found that the sanitation interventions haven’t yielded so far the expected health impacts and had failed to systematically identify and interrupt the key transmission pathways along the whole sanitation chain. The guidelines have come to bridge the gap. Through this engagement SDC supports a systemic shift in the sanitation system through the up- and out scaling of the Guidelines at national level and global level. These actions will provide a clear advance in how sanitation interventions are conducted and will thereby contribute to the goal of providing safe access to sanitation for everyone, everywhere by 2030.

Through the result chain of the intervention a whole range of actors are benefitting from the intervention:

·       Regional Mechanisms/Global Networks

·       Policy makers, national authorities responsible for sanitation in member states (Governments and local Health actors)

·       Strategic partners such as f.e. WSSCC, UNICEF

·       WHO collaborating centres (contributing to technical and training products, e.g. EAWAG)

·       NGOs in official relations

·       Final beneficiaries are population groups that were previously not part of a safely managed sanitation system Practitioners (service providers, from the public and private sector) 

·       Outcome 1:  National and International sanitation and health programmes, regulations and initiatives are revised to reflect recommendations and good practice actions in the WHO “Guidelines on Sanitation and Health”.

-        Outcome 2: Risk based approaches following the principles of Sanitation Safety Planning are adopted at national and local level

Risultati principali attesi:  

·       Output 1: The Guidelines and the risk management approach (SSP) are disseminated and implemented among those responsible for national and international sanitation programmes

·       Output 2: Up-to-date Guidelines learning material and supporting technical documents for risk management approaches are available to support country level implementation

Risultati fasi precedenti:   WHO issued the 3rd edition of the Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater in Agriculture and Aquaculture in 2006 but application of these guidelines did not materialize. This new project follows on from the previous Rethinking Sanitation Systems: Resource Recovery and Safe Reuse (RR&R) project funded by SDC in 2011. SDC’s contribution intended to help WHO develop the Sanitation Safety Plans manual (SSP). This manual has provided practical application for the above mentioned WHO guidelines guidelines in the context of low-income, often peri-urban farming communities. The phase 2 of the RR&R project focused on developing a foundation of experience and capacity to underpin a global scale-up of the SSP in 2018 and beyond.

Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC); Water and Sanitation for All (SWA), Swiss NGO Consortium; AMCOW; Water Aid; UNICEF;

Swiss organizations such as EAWAG; Swiss Institute of Tropical and Public Health (STPH).

Fase 1 01.05.2020 - 31.12.2023   (Completed)