Global handwashing day
Maternal and infant mortality are a key indicator of development in any country, revealing the country’s priorities and values.
Every year, more than 3.5 million children do not get to celebrate their 5th birthday because of diarrhea and pneumonia.
In Côte d’Ivoire, approximately 87,000 children under five die every year. These deaths are generally due to banal infections that can be prevented or treated: diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, malaria. Malnutrition provides ideal conditions for these infections to develop and increases their impact.
• Hands are seldom washed with soap.
• Worldwide, surveys have revealed rates of handwashing at critical moments to range between 0 and 34%. Côte d’Ivoire has a rate of less than 4%.
When hands are not washed with soap and these hands have been in contact with human or animal feces, corporal fluids such as nasal secretions and have then contaminated food or water, they are potential vectors of bacterial, viral or parasitic infection of passive hosts. Thus, persons who do not wash their hands with soap can transmit a variety of diseases, such as:
- Acute respiratory infections
- Intestinal worm infections
- Skin and eye infections
WHY STAGE A GLOBAL HANDWASHING DAY?
WHY NOW?
- 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation
- Importance of below-wrist hygiene in disease prevention
- Focus issue in the 2008 action plan of the School Working Group (NYHQ)
- Short- and long-term advocacy project for all members of the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing
- Millennium Development Goals
OBJECTIVES
- Raise awareness of the importance of HWWS and its advantages.
- Encourage stakeholders to actively promote a favorable environment for behavior change in handwashing.
- Promote advocacy with main partners and decision makers.
- Create a platform for a GHWD coalition (to institutionalize this Day).
PLANNED ACTIVITIES IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE
- In schools:
- Poetry contest
- Song contest with handwashing theme
- Sketch/theater productions involving several schools
- 30,000 children wash their hands in 100 primary schools
- Drawing contest
- Nationwide message from the Minister of Health and Public Hygiene.
- Public handwashing of political and religious leaders.
- Production of a short radio program on handwashing.
- Production of a TV clip on handwashing.
- Broadcasting (20 X) of TV spot on RTI channel 1.
- Broadcasting (20 X) of short radio program on local radio stations and national radio in 7 departments and Abidjan.
- Scientific communication on handwashing.
- Demonstration of correct handwashing technique.
- Radio talk show with opinion leaders and technical experts on handwashing.
IMPACT
30,000 children in 100 primary schools have been motivated and have washed their hands with soap.
