Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene September - October 2016 Vol. 11 No.4 | Page 31
A Cause for Celebration: Global Handwashing Day 2016
Every October 15, hundreds of
thousands of schools, community groups,
organizations, and governments join
together to promote handwashing with
soap and celebrate Global Handwashing
Day. This year is no different.
Handwashing with soap is most often
promoted by the water, sanitation, and
hygiene (WASH) sector, but the impact
of good WASH services and practices
extend beyond this sector alone. Clean
hands are important for achieving
benefits in a range of sectors, such as
nutrition.
Undernutrition is the underlying
Children from participating schools take part in a handwashing competition during the Global
cause of 45% of child deaths and
Handwashing Day celebrations
contributes to 73% of diarrheal deaths
each year. A child might survive being
plagued by undernutrition during their first years of life, but the effects will be
with them a lifetime as, for 161 million children, undernutrition leads to stunting.
Good handwashing practices can help reduce undernutrition by 50% and access
to soap can significantly help ward off diarrhea, thereby reducing the likelihood
of stunting and its lifelong impacts on brain development. What is more, in one
study, the mortality rate among neonates whose birth attendants and mothers had
good handwashing practices was approximately 40% lower than those whose birth
attendants and mothers had poor handwashing practices.
Integrating WASH with nutrition and early child development (ECD) interventions
enables projects to tackle undernutrition in a more comprehensive way.
Handwashing can be strategically integrated into various programs; doing so can
render the design of activities more efficient and strengthen outcomes. Given the
clear links between handwashing and other sectors, Global Handwashing Day
presents an opportune time for those who work in the nutrition or early child
development sectors to promote integrated interventions.
Global Handwashing Day—October 15—is a global advocacy day dedicated to
increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with
soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives. The theme
for Global Handwashing Day this year is “Make handwashing a habit!”
Habit formation is a new area of focus within behavior change and the WASH
sector. This theme emphasizes that handwashing must be practiced regularly to have
an impact on health and wellbeing. For organizations working in nutrition or ECD,
this theme can be easily modified to highlight the impact of hygiene on integration.
For instance, an organization could say, “Make handwashing a habit because
it prevents diarrhea!” or “Make handwashing a habit because it improves
nutrition!”
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