The DOH, through the National Sustainable Sanitation Plan (NSSP), has set an ambitious target that by 2022, all barangays that are practicing open defecation shall be declared Zero Open Defecation (ZOD) status. Thus, the DOH continues to promote the Zero Open Defecation Program (ZODP) advocacy and health education campaign. The ZODP utilizes the approaches and strategies of Community-Led Total Sanitation or CLTS. CLTS is under the umbrella concept of total sanitation that includes a range of behaviors such as stopping open defecation practices; ensuring that everyone uses a sanitary toilet; frequent and proper hand washing; hygienic handling food and water; safe disposal of animal and domestic waste; creation and maintenance of a clean and safe environment. Moving beyond the eradication of open defecation towards the safe management of sanitation for all requires a continuous shift in the types of approaches. That is, the shift from eradicating open defecation, to shared or basic sanitation, to safely managed systems for all will need to be accompanied by a shift in approaches from collective behavior change, towards strengthening supply chains and improving public services. Across all of these steps there is a need for the public regulation of the compliance of behavior, infrastructure and services of individuals, collectives and corporations in order to protect the safety of all concerned.
The assurance of having a sustainable project in the community is by far the most challenging and important aspect that community health projects should have. In line with these, the researchers had meetings with residents of each purok in order to establish a core group to be known as ZOD (zero open defecation) Patrollers. Each purok has one ZOD Patrol Group (ZOD-PG) consisting of eight members. The leaders of the ZOD-PG per purok was called for a focus group discussion wherein a deeper understanding of the problems on toilet sanitation was focused. The leaders came up with their own solutions to some of the problems and was able to realize that some of the problems could not be solved on their level and hence, needed to be raised to the barangay council.