Hand washing with soap saves lives (Health Page)

Oct. 27, 2009

A release from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at the second annual Global Hand Washing Day states that each year, about 26,000 children under five years die of diarrhoea diseases and acute respiratory infection in Ghana.
Globally, the two diseases reportedly claim the lives of about 3.5 million children under five years of age each year.
The day was celebrated on October 15, 2009. The international body, UNICEF, stated that washing of hands with soap and water, especially after visiting the toilet and before handling food, helped to reduce the incidence of diarrhoea by 40 per cent and respiratory infection by nearly 25 per cent.
Although soap was said to be relatively available in most households around the world, UNICEF indicated that globally the observed rate of handwashing with soap at critical moments such as after visiting the toilet and before handling food ranged from zero to 34 per cent.
That showed that in spite of its life-saving potential, washing of hand with soap was seldom practised and also not easy to promote globally.
A release from UNICEF on the day of the celebration was emphatic that water alone was not enough and stressed that the practice whereby one washed his or her hands at those critical times earlier indicated could save many lives, especially that of young children.
Furthermore, handwashing with soap is also being recommended as an action to prevent the spread of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the deadly viral disease which had so far affected 15 people in Ghana.
Under the slogan “Clean hands save lives”, the second annual Global Hand Washing Day campaign aims to engage schoolchildren as effective agents for change.
The main organiser of the annual event, UNICEF, indicated that “the introduction of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions in schools, including handwashing with soap, is an entry point for children to understand and then take these good hygiene practices back into their homes and communities”.
For successful and sustained behavioural change to occur, the organisation was advocating incorporation of a community-based and community-sensitive approaches that understood what motivated people to change.
According to UNICEF, unsafe water and inadequate sanitation were often major causes of lost work and missed school days, perpetuating the cycle of economic and social stagnation in many countries.
“Investments in health, child survival, education, water supply, and sanitation are all jeopardised if there is lack of emphasis on handwashing with soap”, it pointed out.
It added that higher rates of handwashing with soap would significantly contribute towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) which dealt with reducing deaths of children under the age of five by two-thirds by 2015.
Handwashing with soap, according to the UNICEF represented a cornerstone of public health and could be considered an affordable, accessible “do-it-yourself” vaccine.
To save people, especially children from suffering from diseases related to keeping unclean hands, the UNICEF advocated that hand washing with soap should be part of people’s lives.