Tanzania, blessed with so much beauty and plentiful natural resources strives to become a middle-income country by 2025. The country is putting so much efforts to promote industrialization and ensuring the health and wellbeing of all citizens. One of the notable achievements in the promotion of health and wellbeing is witnessed in the ongoing national wide behavioural change campaign ‘Usichukulie Poa, Nyumba ni Choo’ that calls for heads of households to construct and use improved toilets and practice handwashing at critical moments.
Campaigns to trigger communities to construct toilets started way back in 1973 when the “Mtu ni Afya Campaign” was launched and implemented until 1978 focusing in any form of toilets. In 2012 to 2016, the National Sanitation Campaign (NSC) Phase I was implemented and achieved 39.06% national coverage of household access to improved toilets from the recorded baseline of 19.5% in 2012. In September 2019, twenty-one months after the launch of phase II of the NSC in December 2017, the country has recorded an increase of 16.51% (46% in December 2017 to 62.51% September 2019) of households with improved toilets. –Tumetoka Mbali.
The increase of households with improved toilets in the country has been a result of combined efforts from different partners that include Development Partners, Government Officials, Political Leaders and the private sector. The Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children expects to have 75% of households in Tanzania with improved toilets by June 2021.
