WASH-NTDs Roundtable 2014: Day 2
Building on the enthusiasm of yesterday, today was spent articulating what success might look like in 5 years’ time and outlining an agreed and actionable work plan for the next 2 years.
The 5 year vision of delegates included:
• Greater collaboration between the WASH and NTDs sectors globally leading to increased resourcing and support to countries and regions.
• Greater collaboration at the national level in terms of planning, resources and monitoring.
o National level NTD plans/planning incorporating WASH
o Health information systems that collect joint indicators on WASH and NTDs
o Good projects on the ground and increased financing for these
o Increased success in control and elimination of NTDs
As a survey we asked delegates to complete prior to the roundtable revealed that many delegates were not aware of what progress had been made in the 4 work areas identified at Seattle, it was determined that much better communication of successes against this 5 year vision would be required.
Having established the 5 year vision, delegates broke out into smaller groups to determine what actions would need to be taken and by whom to attain this vision. Broadly, four specific areas of focus emerged:
1. Monitoring and indicators
2. Leveraging financing
3. Broadening common knowledge of WASH/NTDs
4. London Declaration Scorecard
Monitoring and indicators
Actions suggested included: establishing core shared monitoring indicators – such as the hygiene indicators formulated yesterday – that could be recommended to the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on NTDs; and establishing an NTD proxy for measuring the impact of WASH programmes.
Leveraging financing
Actions suggested included: increasing donor coordination and advocacy around WASH/NTDs collaboration; investigating the possible use of multi-donor pooled funds to finance implementation on WASH/NTDs programmes; and getting WASH and NTDs on theSanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting agenda.
Broadening common knowledge of WASH/NTDs
Actions suggested included: establishing training materials/sharing best practice on joint WASH and NTDs programming; scaling up the use of joint planning tools such as the F&E Toolkit and the WASH and NTDs Manual; and establishing an easily-accessible high-level repository for WASH/NTDs research.
London Declaration Scorecard
The principle action suggested was seeking to establish a united WASH voice within the Uniting to Combat NTDs coalition. It was envisaged that this would entail the inclusion of WASH progress (such as GLAAS measures) on the Scorecard, both as a standalone indicator and also embedded within each disease reporting.
Next steps
A SHARE representative will present these key outcomes of the European Roundtable at the NTD NGDO Network (NNN) WASH Working Group meeting taking place in Paris next week. This is the perfect forum to further advance the collaboration agenda between the WASH and NTDs sectors as the more than 80 WASH and NTD experts will be attending the inaugural meeting of the NNN WASH Working Group with the view to determining a work plan for the group.
We are also working on producing two journal papers summarising progress since Seattle and the indicators we propose govern collaboration between the WASH and NTDs sectors going forward. Watch this space and follow @SHAREresearch on Twitter for updates!
Read more
Missed our summary of the first day? Read it here.
Read a blog from WASHWatch about the roundtable here.
View an event report on the roundtable here.