5th Meeting of the GTFCC Working Group on Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH)

The Ending Cholera: A Global Roadmap to 2030 launched in October 2017 was the first step in operationalizing the new global strategy for cholera control. It sets out a path toward a world in which cholera is no longer a threat to public health, targeting a 90% reduction in cholera deaths and eliminationof cholera in 20 countries by 2030.

Cholera shows us the precise locations of the people and communities who have been left behind in the course of global development. Because cholera is a highly sensitive, highly specific indicator for extreme poverty, targeting cholera hotspots is an effective way to prioritize the delivery of WASH interventions to achieve maximum impact and return on investment across a wide range of outcomes. We can achieve sustainable WASH improvements that will put the world’s poorest back on the global development agenda and help us to make major strides towards achieving these collective goals. The WASH Working Group will address this issue at its annual meeting.

Objectives of the meeting

At its fifth meeting, the WASH Working Group will define its role and strategies to support countries achieve 80% WASH coverage of the cholera hotspots.

Specifically, the meeting objectives are to:

• Showcase current practices aimed to increase WASH investments in cholera hotspots by countries, partners and donors.
• Critically review existing, emerging or new tools, strategies and approaches aimed to support the implementation of WASH in countries.
• Identify actions to be taken by countries, partners and donors to support the development and implementation of the WASH component of their National Cholera Plans (NCPs).
• Identify opportunities for the application of the research plan and integration into the broader GTFCC research agenda.