Dar es Salaam, 7-9 March 2017 : Climate change has been recognized as a major global health threat of the 21st century. Its effects are already happening and are expected to have complex, long term consequences to the livelihood, environment and the health sector including in Tanzania. In recognizing the devastating impact of climate change, the Government of Tanzania has put in place a number of initiatives to address the challenges of climate change. These include the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA -2007); National Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan (2009); and the National Climate Change Strategy (2012).

DFID in collaboration with WHO is also supporting Tanzania to mitigate the impact of climate change through a project entitled “Building Climate Change Adaptation in Health in Least Developed Countries through resilient Water, Sanitation and Hygiene”. The project aims at building adaptation capacity to the impact of climate change and variability on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). It is also being implemented in Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Nepal.

As part of the project, all implementing countries have started mainstreaming climate change into health policies and strategies. In Tanzania, climate change has been addressed in the Health Sector Strategic Plan IV. Additionally policy briefs have been developed to inform the national health policy that is currently under review. A number of advocacy sessions to the top management of ministry of health and training sessions have been conducted to 23 Regional Health Officers.

Both Tanzania and Ethiopia have also developed Guidelines for the Preparation and Implementation of Climate Resilient Water Safety Plans (CR – WSPs) in the Pilot sites including trainings. Ethiopia is implementing the CR WSP in the pilot sites. Ethiopia has also scaled up the implementation of CR WSP to 25 pilot sites of which some are Government funded projects.  Tanzania has mainstreamed CR WSP in the Water Sector Development Programme.

______________________________________

For more information, please contact:

Technical contacts:

Mr. Barthasar Rwelengera; Tel: +255 769 439 191; Email: rwelengerab [at] who.int (rwelengerab[at]who[dot]int)

Media contacts:

Dr. Neema Kileo; Tel: +255 755 551 804; Email: kileon [at] who.int (kileon[at]who[dot]int)