Sanitation Updates

Teaching children how to stay away from germs can be a powerful tool to help prevent some communicable diseases.

ABOUT 30 minutes into the interview with Cheng Chee Fong, director of a language enrichment centre for children, four-year-old Christopher poked his head into the room. Spotting me, a stranger, he veered a little towards us on his way out of the centre’s washroom trying to figure out what was going on.

But his curiosity did not make him forget to practise the proper hygiene habits ingrained into him by his teachers.

Stealing a glance at us, he picked up a tissue from a basket outside the washroom and wiped his hands, still dripping with water from washing, before throwing the tissue in a wastepaper basket and hurrying off to listen to his teacher tell the story of germs next door.

Read More - thestar

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
28 April 2008, By Jane Akinyi

A national hand-washing programme funded by the World Bank and other donors has been unveiled. The Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) is supporting the Ministry of Health in a campaign that will have hand washing as part of its activities, to check cholera.

The first phase of the project, which is expected to cost $ 200,000 (Sh12.4 million), and run for three years, starts in September. WSP had used $ 50,000 (Sh3 million) in preparation for the programme, which would benefit many residents of Kisumu town, in the wake of a cholera outbreak in Nyanza.

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The practice of hand-washing with soap in Vietnam’s rural areas is not common, a conference heard last week.

According to the National Baseline Survey on the Environmental Sanitation and Hygiene Situation in Vietnam conducted by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and other partners, 12 percent of rural people wash their hands with soap before meals and only 16 percent do so after excreting.

Read More - Thanhnien News

HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR hands?” the headmaster of a primary school in a village in northern Nigeria asked 160 children standing in line one morning before starting class.

“Yes master!” answered the youthful, enthusiastic crowd.
his daily ritual has become a game, said Sani Marafa, the headmaster at the school in Lokoto, a community of some 50 mud and brick houses 20 kilometres from Niger State’s capital, Minna.

“The children weren’t used to washing their hands in the morning,” he explained. “They didn’t know the importance and benefit of using latrines.”

He produced many drawings he uses to explain basic hygiene to students and little games he has devised.

But it is not just games and drawings that have improved the hygiene of Lokoto. Water came to the village in 2003 when the Niger state government, with support from the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), sank two wells in the village.

Read More - IRIN, 18 Feb 2008

Sanitation is an essential component of healthy childcare. However, young children do not have good sanitation habits. Germs may abound not only on the toilet seat and flush handle, but also on the sink, trash can lids, and door handles. Children contact germs on their hands, and then spread them from their hands to their mouths as well as to toys and other children. Many diseases such as hepatitis A, hepatitis E, typhoid fever, and giardiasis are spread through the fecal/oral route.

Proper hand-washing is the first step in sanitation and disease prevention. Teach children how to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and running water. Adults also should wash their hands after assisting children with toileting.

Read More - Morning Express

Washing hands with soap is a simple and effective way to prevent the spread of many infectious diseases. Yet globally, hand washing rates are low. What factors affect hand washing behaviour in Ghana and what could motivate hygiene behaviour change?

A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine proposes that consumer marketing, which aims to target the audiences’ hopes, desires and motivations, may be a more effective approach than increasing knowledge via health education.

Read the id21 Research Highlight of this study or go directly to the journal article link

For more on handwashing see Hygiene Central and  The Global Public-Private Partnership for Hand washing with Soap

The Cochrane Collaboration has published, Hand washing for preventing diarrhoea (Review), by Ejemot RI, Ehiri JE, Meremikwu MM, Critchley JA.

This is a reprint of a Cochrane review, prepared and maintained by The Cochrane Collaboration and published in The Cochrane Library, 2008, Issue 1

Background - Diarrhoea is a common cause of morbidity and a leading cause of death among children aged less than five years, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. It is transmitted by ingesting contaminated food or drink, by direct person-to-person contact, or from contaminated hands. Hand washing is one of a range of hygiene promotion interventions that can interrupt the transmission of diarrhoea-causing pathogens.

Objectives - To evaluate the effects of interventions to promote hand washing on diarrhoeal episodes in children and adults.

Main results - Fourteen randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria. Eight trials were institution-based, five were community-based, and one was in a high-risk group (AIDS patients). Interventions promoting hand washing resulted in a 29%reduction in diarrhoea episodes in institutions in high-income countries (IRR 0.71, 95%CI 0.60 to 0.84; 7 trials) and a 31%reduction in such episodes in communities in low- or middle-income countries (IRR 0.69, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.87; 5 trials).

Authors’ conclusions - Hand washing can reduce diarrhoea episodes by about 30%. This significant reduction is comparable to the effect of providing clean water in low-income areas.However, trials with longer follow up and that test differentmethods of promoting hand washing are needed.

Download the complete report