National Strategy for Sanitation and Hygiene.

This Strategy, based on the national sanitation policy for The Gambia, creates a sector-wide approach for achieving a sustainable sanitation programme in The Gambia. The existing National Water Policy has made insufficient provision for sanitation issues, and this Strategy aims at filling in this gap. The objective of the Strategy is to provide an acceptable, affordable and sustainable sanitation and hygiene service to all communities in the Gambia through inter-agency collaboration and community participation. It sets out eight Strategic Priority Areas around which the strategic responses and activities recommended in the strategy revolve: (1) Policy and Legislation; (2) Sanitation and Hygiene Sector Coordination Framework; (3) Sanitation and Hygiene Services; (4) Capacity Building and Infrastructure Development; (5) Sanitation Marketing and Hygiene Promotion; (6) Monitoring and Evaluation (7) Research and Development; (8) Financing Framework. The Strategy proposes new coordinating structures for promoting inter-agency collaboration and partnership in delivering the recommended actions. Community Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Committees are to be created at the local level with the mandate to cooperate in the implementation of national policies and strategies on water, sanitation and hygiene. The Strategy sets out the current policy and legal context and describes the current situation of sanitation and hygiene in The Gambia.
The Strategy sets, for the attainment of Target 7c of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), specified goals regarding sanitation. More general objectives include, among other things, reduction of sanitation and hygiene-related diseases, raising awareness of sanitation and hygienic practices, reviewing and harmonizing existing policies, legal and institutional structures with a view to creating an appropriate coordinating framework for enhancing the effective and efficient implementation of the national sanitation and hygiene policy and strategy.
The eight strategic priority areas identified for this Strategy have been further subdivided into strategic objectives, for each of which a number of concrete forms of action have been proposed. The Strategy proposes to create an Inter- Ministerial Steering Committee on Sanitation and Hygiene as the high-level policy organ on sanitation and hygiene, to exercise a supervisory responsibility over the (to be created) National Sanitation and Hygiene Agency. Other measures, concern, among other things, setting up of a system for the systematic collection and processing of data (quantitative and qualitative) on the sanitation and hygiene sector, safe water supply to public facilities (especially schools) and enhancement solid waste management (including hazardous waste). Access to adequate and safe water, and improved sanitation and hygiene at school level is considered to be a basic human right.