UNICEF promotes habit of handwashing with soap in Sierra Leone

USPA NEWS - Keeping handwashing with soap as a habit, even well after the Ebola epidemic, is a key theme of today´s Global Handwashing Day, as celebrated in Sierra Leone by the Ministry of Water Resources and partners.

Keeping handwashing with soap as a habit, even well after the Ebola epidemic, is a key theme of today´s Global Handwashing Day, as celebrated in Sierra Leone by the Ministry of Water Resources and partners.   Handwashing with soap is dangerously low in many countries, including Sierra Leone, UNICEF reports, despite its proven benefits to child health, and its importance in reducing the transmission of deadly diseases including Ebola. In Sierra Leone, diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections are major contributors to the extremely high child mortality rate.   Last year, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and included hygiene for the first time in the global agenda. One of the SDG targets is to achieve “˜access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene´ by 2030. This is the ninth Global Handwashing Day and the second after the adoption of the SDGs.   “Improving the overall hygiene and sanitation situation in the country in combination with hygiene education is the key to preventing diseases like the cholera and diarrhea,“ said UNICEF Sierra Leone Representative, Geoff Wiffin. “Therefore making handwashing with soap a habit is a cost effective solution for children and their families´ healthy growth and development.“ On the eve of Global Handwashing Day, UNICEF says that, in 2015, more than 300,000 children under the age of five died globally from diarrheal infections linked to poor access to safe drinking water and sanitation ““ a rate of more than 800 per day. Yet many of these deaths could have been prevented through the simple act of handwashing with soap  Approximately 1 in 5 people globally wash their hands after using the toilet. Each year, 1.7 million children do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday because of diarrhoea and pneumonia. When children wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet or before eating, they reduce their risk of getting diarrhoea by more than 40 per cent.-------------------------------------  Global Handwashing Day in Sierra Leone will be marked by the Government of Sierra Leone and partners across the country under this year´s theme: “Making handwashing a habit“. In Freetown there will be float parade with comedians and other stakeholders from Aberdeen Road to Lumley where they will demonstrate proper ways of handwashing with soap. The event will climax with an advocacy event at the SOS village in Lumley with key policy makers and other influencers.  Under the President´s Recovery Priorities, the Government of Sierra Leone, and UNICEF with funding support from the UK Government and other donors is aiming to support over 150,000 people in 400 rural communities for the improvement of hand washing and sanitation and plans to construct/rehabilitated a total of 504 water points in schools, communities and health care facilities. Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest child mortality rates globally, also has particularly low levels of handwashing. Even health care facilities often lack places for handwashing. Some 42 per cent of them in WHO´s Africa Region have no water source available within 500 metres. Source APO and UNICEF Sierra Leone.