Hygiene: new hopes, new horizons
Evidence shows the benefit of improved hygiene (e.g. improved hand-washing and safe stool disposal). However, although promotion of safe hygiene is the single most cost-effective means of preventing infectious disease, investment in hygiene is low both in the health and in the water and sanitation sectors.
The current paper underscores the need to figure out how best to make safe hygiene practices matters of daily routine that are sustained by social norms on a mass scale. The paper notes that full and active involvement of the health sector in getting safe hygiene to all homes, schools, and institutions will bring major gains to public health. As a result, more medium-scale programmes operating at rural or urban district level are needed.
The document concludes the following:
- governments and ministries have to invest in programmes that can change hygiene behaviour in villages and towns where children are dying from neglected diseases.
- massive efforts need to be made to train health workers in the skills of hygiene promotion to help them leave their outdated methods.
- support is needed for the research to serve changing hygiene behaviour on a large scale, and anticipating both the costs and financial returns of an improved hygiene.
- the most effective use of a hygiene budget might be to cover larger areas by use of mass media.
- good professional practice requires continual advancement in a feedback loop of learning and knowledge development whilst doing.
