COVID-19 boost for handwashing in South Asia

Nicolas Osbert is convinced that when it comes to promoting the concept of handwashing, two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have achieved what UNICEF, WHO and development agencies have not been able to do in two decades. .

Osbert should know. He is the Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH) Program Manager at UNICEF India and has 20 years of experience with WASH and public health programs in Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

According to the Joint WASH Surveillance Program report released by UNICEF and WHO in July 2021, COVID-19 has highlighted the value of good hand hygiene. At the start of the pandemic, three in 10 people worldwide lacked facilities at home to wash their hands with soap and water.

According to the UNICEF and WHO report, some 818 million children worldwide lack basic handwashing facilities in their schools, putting them at increased risk of COVID-19. 19 and other communicable diseases. Of these children, more than a third (275 million) came from South Asia.

However, the report states that between 2015 and 2020, the global population with safely managed drinking water at home increased from 70% to 74%; safely managed sanitation services increased from 47% to 54%; and handwashing facilities with soap and water increased from 67% to 71%.

In South Asia, in 2020, 80% of the Pakistani population had basic hygiene facilities, including household handwashing facilities with soap and water. India followed with 68% while Nepal recorded 62% and Bangladesh 58%, according to UNICEF-WHO.

The rate of improvement in basic handwashing practices between 2015 and 2020 was highest in Bangladesh at 3.33%. Next come Pakistan with 3.15%, Nepal with 1.37% and India with 0.10%. Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also in a list of 13 countries that have increased overall hygiene by five percentage points during this period.

In 2016, according to a survey by the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia (SEARO), only 44% of schools in Bangladesh had basic handwashing services with soap and water. The situation in Indonesia, which falls under the SEARO region, was worse with only 42% while India had 55%.

Even by 2020, nearly 60% of schools in Indonesia still lack functional handwashing stations equipped with soap and water.

India recorded much better progress for the same year. More than 90% of schools in India already had basic handwashing facilities, up from just 36.3% in 2013, according to the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s Unified District Education Information System .

As COVID-19 spread across India in March 2020, UNICEF launched a program to secure WASH services for at-risk, low-capacity and vulnerable communities in South Asia’s largest country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion. The program focused on frequent handwashing with soap and water – identified as a key measure to prevent COVID-19 transmission – although it could not be continued in schools because they were closed.

“WASH teams have closely coordinated with the central Jal Shakti Ministry, the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, to promote school WASH programs by supporting their policies and efforts to advocacy as well as their implementation,” said Osbert. “We have also worked with development partners, who have provided millions of bars of soap, and with provincial governments in 15 states to promote handwashing.”

WASH programs are also closely linked to India’s Swacch Bharat mission launched in October 2014 to ensure clean water for households and provide sustainable sanitation as well as solid and liquid waste management, including plastic waste and sewage. .

“It helped that the Swacch Bharat Mission-Grameen (a public behavior change initiative) and the Jal Jeevan Mission (to provide every household with a tap), were favorite projects of Prime Minister Narendra (Modi) aimed at ensuring the access to safe sanitation and water through empowered communities,” Anushree Mishra, a communications and advocacy specialist involved in the WASH program, told SciDev.Net.

“Simple hand washing with soap and water has been shown to be more effective than vaccination in preventing the spread of not only COVID-19, but also the pathogens responsible for diarrheal disease and respiratory disease,” explains Osbert. “The other benefit of handwashing is that it helps prevent the development of microbial resistance due to reduced antibiotic use.”

“Our strategy moving forward is to build on the massive wave of public health created by the pandemic to work more systematically with government ministries and departments involved in health and education,” Osbert said.

Provided by SciDev.Net