Ghana will join thousands of people in the world to celebrate five years of Global hand-washing Day, with the hope that washing hands with soap takes centre stage in the country, in an effort to fight to save lives.
The event is a part of the Public Private Partnership for Hand-washing With Soap Programme (PPPHW), a joint effort of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), the World Bank, UNICEF, WaterAid, Plan Ghana, Unilever, World Vision, and other public, development and private partners.
The vision of the PPPHW is to make hand-washing with soap at critical times the accepted and practised norm among all in Ghana.
The day which would be mark on Monday October 15 2012 at the Efua Sutherland Children?s Park Accra at 10.00 AM is aimed at increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of hand-washing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases.
In a statement signed and issued by Madam Theodora Adomako-Adjei of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency and copied to Today in Accra yesterday, the CWSA noted that around the world, children, teachers, parents, celebrities, and government officials plan to mobilize and motivate millions to ?lather up? in order to reduce life-threatening diseases, such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.
According to the release, hand-washing with soap is one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhea disease and pneumonia, which together are responsible for approximately 3.5 million child deaths every year.
The release stated that children are highly susceptible to the diseases which are caused by a lack of effective sanitation and poor hygiene. More than 5,000 children under the age of five die every day as a result of diarrhea diseases, caused in part by unsafe water, lack of access to basic sanitation facilities and poor hygiene.
It advised that by washing hands with soap, families and communities can help reduce child mortality rates from diarrhea diseases by almost 50 per cent and respiratory infections by nearly 25 percent.
?Under the slogan ?Clean hands save lives,? the driving theme for Global Hand-washing Day is children and schools. The celebration revolves around Children, who acting as agents of change, take the good practices of hygiene learned at school back into their homes and communities,? the release said.
?The active participation and involvement of children, along with culturally sensitive community-based interventions aim at ensuring sustained behavioral change. Hand-washing with soap ? particularly at critical moments, including after using the toilet and before handling food ? is a key cost effective and life-saving intervention,? it noted.
According to the statement, lack of soap is usually not the barrier ? with the vast majority of even poor households having soap at home ? rather, the problem is that soap is rarely used for hand-washing.
STORY: KORYEKPOR AWLESU FREEMAN
