Why hand hygiene education must go on past pandemic

It is Global Handwashing Day today. So what? you might ask. Well, it is a day to remember the importance of hand hygiene as one of the most effective and cheapest ways to keep the coronavirus at bay.

And not just the coronavirus, we know that access to safe water, adequate sanitation, and proper hygiene (WASH) education can reduce illness and death and have an impact on poverty reduction and socio-economic development.

The simple act of handwashing is the single most cost-effective way of stopping child deaths. It can reduce the incidences of pneumonia by 23 percent and diarrhoea by up to 45 percent.

When more people use soap regularly, and have access to sanitation, the impact on health is significant. In fact, if everyone followed ideal handwashing habits — washing with soap before eating and after using the toilet — each person would require approximately 20 bars of soaps every year.

However, consumption levels are far below this, with 1.5 billion people using less than eight bars of soap per year. This clearly shows the magnitude of the task facing the world in terms of driving the WASH agenda.

While progress is being made on the WASH agenda with two of the UN Sustainable development goals clearly calling this out (SDG3 — Good Health & Hygiene & SDG6 — Clean Water & Sanitation) more needs to be done. The corona virus pandemic has brought to the fore both the need for accelerated education on the importance of hand hygiene as well as the urgent need to make it easier for people to access hygiene solutions by improving access to water, wash stations and soap.

To address this challenge, we need the private sector, the public sector, the social sector and the community to come together in a never before seen way to overcome, not only the pandemic, but to make handwashing a common behaviour, particularly in our children, so that we have a bright future ahead for the entire community.

Towards this end, it has been heartening to see how the multi-stakeholder model has come to play in Kenya. The government, the social sector, the private sector, and communities at large have come together to fight the coronavirus by educating the population at large on the importance of handwashing and providing access to water, wash stations and soap. Indeed, it has been a year when competitors have come together to collaborate, different social sector players have combined resources and the Kenyan frugal innovation approach has come to the fore. A joint force of might is being marshalled to combat the virus and truly make handwashing a common behaviour.

It has been encouraging to see entities like the NBCC (National Business Compact for Coronavirus), for example, spearheading the work to accelerate local action and support government efforts in countering the pandemic by educating consumers and providing access to make handwashing, among other things, common practice.

Enabling this are many collaborators and donors, notable among them being the global Unilever-DFID coalition. Given that one of the big challenges in hand washing is the education and access to soap, large-scale soap donations from organisations like Unilever are also helping this behaviour change work.

Local manufacturing and distribution of basic hygiene products like soaps, liquid handwash and sanitisers by many manufacturers has also been a big enabler in this endeavour.

One might say that in this year, due to Covid-19, the importance of hand washing among the public has increased. But we need to continue this journey and ensure that this habit of hand washing becomes common place and not forgotten after we have vanquished the coronavirus.

And hence the importance of constantly raising the awareness of the importance of handwashing with soap to prevent disease. A major event to do this is the Global Handwashing Day (GHD) that is celebrated every year on October 15. GHD is a global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap to prevent diseases and save lives.

Across the world, 200 million people take part in celebrating GHD in more than 100 countries. Lifebuoy is a founding partner of the Global Handwashing Partnership, which has supported GHD from its outset.

As we go forward together on this journey, we inspire each one of you today, on Global Handwashing Day, to educate yourself, your family and those around you on the importance of handwashing and let’s make it as omnipresent as “H is for Handwashing”.

Marella is marketing director, Unilever