Zambia National Health Policy.

Zambia National Health Policy 2012 is a cross-sectoral strategic plan designed to improve the health status of the people of Zambia by providing equitable access to cost effective and quality health services as close to the family as possible.
The policy recognizes that food safety and environmental health are among the national health priorities and addresses these issues by seeking to promote hygiene, universal access to safe water, acceptable sanitation and food safety in order to reduce the incidence of environmentally related diseases. By working on food safety, the policy seeks to enable more inclusive and efficient food systems. To this end, efforts will focus on developing food safety policies and strengthening the monitoring of food establishments at production, whole sale and retail levels, promoting and strengthening the provision of adequate and safe water and appropriate sanitary facilities in urban and rural areas, strengthening and expanding health care waste management at all levels of care, ensuring that the radioactive waste generated in the country is properly managed to avoid undue exposure of the general population to harmful effects of ionizing radiation and contamination of the environment, strengthening capacity to respond to effects of climate change, and strengthening port health services at points of entry to deal with trade related issues and International Health Regulations.
Another objective of the strategy is to significantly improve the nutritional status of Zambian population particularly for children, adolescents and women in child bearing age. To help eliminate malnutrition the government will strengthen institutions dealing with food and nutrition issues, strengthen coordination of nutrition programmes, strengthen nutrition service delivery, communicable and non communicable diseases programmes, provide support to micronutrient deficiency prevention and control, and strengthen the implementation of infant and young child feeding Programme including school health and nutrition programmes.
The policy includes gender considerations and stipulates amongst its objectives the need to improve on the availability, distribution and condition of appropriate essential infrastructure so as to improve equity of access to essential health services. To this end, efforts will focus on ensuring that the infrastructure is user friendly, gender sensitive and accessible to differently abled people, appropriateness and designs of infrastructure.
Regarding governance, the policy will be coordinated and implemented through the existing health sector organizational and management structures. The Ministry of Health will be responsible for policy and legal framework formulation, strategic decision-making, standards setting and enforcement, and the overall coordination of the implementation. Provincial Health Offices will serve as intermediaries for operationalisation of the strategy. Districts and Hospitals will serve as the major implementing agencies and will manage the services bases on the principles set in this policy and in the national strategic plan. The Monitoring and Evaluation Sub-Committee of Sector Advisory Group will be responsible for providing advice on all matters concerning monitoring and evaluation. The National Health Policy shall have a mid-term review after five years and a final term review after ten years.