Embrace handwashing to improve community health
Simon J. Mone
The Global Handwashing Day (GHD) was celebrated on October 15. On this occasion, World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) launched a report on the state of the world’s hand hygiene for the year 2021.
Some takeaways from the report include 30 percent of the world’s population (2.3 billion) is estimated to lack handwashing facilities at home while, in 2020, at least 818 million children in school did not have the facilities. It is also estimated that workers in 33 percent of health facilities lack handwashing facilities and water for basic use.
Globally, efforts aimed at stopping the spread of sanitation-related illnesses and the coronavirus have increased significantly. Knowledge of handwashing and hand hygiene is widespread. However, the knowledge is never practiced as a long-term measure.
We see it in many homes without handwashing facilities. Schools and healthcare facilities that are supposed to be leading the way in promoting hand hygiene, also do not walk the handwashing talk. At workplaces, people respond only when disease prevalence is high and then revert to their old habits when cases of infections reduce making handwashing a temporary sanitation and hygiene measure in times of public health crises.
It should not happen, especially at a time when the world is struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Hand hygiene, being the first line of defence against sanitation-related diseases, must be a routine practice. Communities should not be forced to install handwashing facilities at their homes and at workplaces, to overcome hygiene challenges.
As it is, we have a difficult task on our hands. Even if hand hygiene practices have increased among communities, in some parts of the world, people still want to be reminded to drop their poor handwashing practices.
Many communities say access to water and soap is still a problem and reports state that over half of populations in developing countries do not easily access basic hand hygiene facilities. Most people cannot afford to buy soap for that purpose. As they are vulnerable families, struggling to provide for other needs. And because of this, handwashing habits of some communities will be poor for some time.
So, we see that vulnerability slows down the progress made towards eliminating sanitation-related diseases, especially in our era of the rampaging Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, to speed up progress on hand hygiene, we can up the game by empowering the village health teams.
Give them the required facilitation to enable them go around communities to sensitise them, monitor households and ensure that homes have handwashing facilities, encourage households to spare some money to meet the cost of installing these facilities and engage communities to continue to be active participants in preventing these diseases.
Many people already have the knowledge on what should be done. But they must put this knowledge into practice. We can overcome sanitation-related diseases by ensuring that every community has handwashing facilities.
Encourage workplaces, schools, homes and churches to provide and install handwashing facilities. Hand hygiene is not a temporary measure in combating sanitation-related illnesses. Rather, it is a permanent one to ensure that communities stay healthy and are resilient.
Let us all embrace handwashing for better community health. Then we will go a long way in preventing another health crisis.
Mr Simon J. Mone is a Civil Engineer
