National Hygiene Promotion Strategy for Water Supply and Sanitation Sector in Bangladesh 2012

In the 1980s, national campaigns and advocacy focusing on sanitation started with an emphasis on the latrine promotion. The focus gained impetus in late 2003 when GOB organized the South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) and declared the goal of 100% sanitation by 2010. Sanitation was given a further boost in 2005 when the GOB developed a National Sanitation Strategy as a means of achieving the relevant MDG goals. Even though hygiene promotion was supposed to be an integral part of the strategy, the strategy was skewed more to the advantage of sanitation focused mainly on safe human excreta disposal considering the national priority of that period rather than hygiene in terms of the elements of the strategy.

Improving water quality, hygiene practices and excreta disposal are all important in reducing disease transmission. Furthermore, evidence also suggests that combined improvements to all activities have a greater impact on disease transmission than the sum of their individual activity. Improving hygiene practice often involves greater water usage and it is therefore important that hygiene promotion strategy is to be integrated with the overall sector policies and strategies to improve access to safe drinking water supply and sanitation. Therefore, the need for developing and implementation of a functional ‘national strategy for hygiene promotion’ has evolved to make the available water supply and sanitation service provisions in public health and the overall well-being of the people effective, and thus sustainable.

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