Posted: August 23, 2017

STH Coalition to Provide Opportunities for Strengthening National STH Programs

STH Coalition partners, and increasingly ministry of health-led national STH programs it supports, aim to achieve the WHO-defined goal of eliminating STH as a public health problem by 2020. To achieve this important goal, the Coalition advocates for a comprehensive approach to STH control. Such an approach relies, in part, on clear governmental policies. These policies may be directly related to STH control; for example, a policy on child health clearly states the government’s goal for STH control. While other necessary policies may address important contributing factors such as the provision of sanitation facilities in schools and homes.

To assist endemic country governments, and partners supporting them, to establish an enabling policy environment, CWW as the STH Coalition secretariat, drafted a tool to assess the existing national policy environment and identify clear gaps to address.

The Coalition will present a draft of the instrument during a session of the Neglected Tropical Disease NGO Network (NNN) annual meeting in September 2017.  We encourage interested national STH program managers and STH Coalition partners to attend the session.  In addition, we seek to identify national programs that are interested in providing input or piloting the assessment. For additional information please contact the STH Coalition secretariat at STHCoaliton@taskforce.org.

A second NNN workshop will explore specific opportunities for improving data collection, analysis, and use. National STH programs increasingly recognize the essentiality of appropriate program monitoring to guide decision making and demonstrate progress toward the goal of elimination of STH as public health problem. STH Coalition partners, including national STH programs, will discuss their experiences in shifting from school-based to community-based program monitoring surveys. Additionally, they will describe data issues related to unprogrammed or private sector deworming – particularly for the preschool-age population.