WASH and schistosomiasis control partners met in Madagascar to determine ways to combine efforts to eliminate schistosomiasis.
The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) at Imperial College London, has been supporting treatment programmes against schistosomiasis in Madagascar since 2014 and has been successful in treating 2.9 million school-age children to date.
However, without continued treatment in areas of poor sanitation and clean water, the disease will quickly bounce back to pre-intervention levels.
The Ministry of Health (MoH) in Madagascar therefore feel it is important to start implementing WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) initiatives in the country in order to make disease control activities more sustainable and set-up a long-term solution to achieve elimination.
With coordination by the MoH, representatives from the schistosomiasis and WASH communities, including SCI, UNICEF-WASH, the World Health Organization and the Madagascan Ministry of Education, met on 28 September to discuss ways they could collaborate to achieve shared goals in improving sanitation and access to clean water in areas that need it most, and to control and eliminate schistosomiasis.
The MoH are determined to make the implementation of WASH initiatives possible to help achieve a greater impact in schistosomiasis reduction, and with the strong will of the WASH and schistosomiasis control partners to support these initiatives, they are sure to help them realise their ambitions.
Dr Sarah Nogaro, SCI’s Programme Advisor for Madagascar says: "This is the start of an exciting new collaboration between the health and WASH sector in Madagascar.
Combining efforts from both sectors will mean the synergy will be even greater and a leap forward in reaching the targets set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
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