As a way to increase awareness and understanding about the importance of hand washing with soap, as an easy and affordable way to prevent diseases and to save lives, SOS children’s village in collaboration with partners on last Saturday celebrated the global hand washing day. Read moreMarking the celebration with a float parade from Aberdeen road to the SOS school auditorium, hundreds joined the procession including representatives from UNICEF, WASH, OXFAM and Water aid ministries of health, education, water resources and social welfare.
Welcoming the crowds, including comedians, marching band school children, SOS national director, Peter Cummings informed the gathering that the 2016 global hand-washing celebration was parts of the various interventions of the SOS to improve the over hygiene and sanitation situation in the country and to spread messages of the value of clean hands.
Mr Cumming during his address maintained that hand washing with soap is a campaign that was initiated to reduce childhood mortality rates related with respiratory and diarrheal diseases adding that hygiene education is the key in preventing diseases like cholera and diarrhoea.
” When children wash their hands with soap after using the toilet or before eating, they reduce their risk of getting diarrhoea and other respiratory diseases,” Mr Cummings added
Highlighting SOS’s passion for children and the need to promote the culture of hand-washing with soap which he said is low in Sierra Leone; Mr Cummings encouraged stakeholder institutions to collaborate with SOS in working for the livelihood of children that are in desperate need.
Keynote speaker, Madam Sylvia Blyden, minister of social welfare and children affairs during her statement noted that the global hand-washing day is design to foster and support a local culture of hand-washing with soap and to shine a spotlight on the state of hand-washing round the world.
Madam Blyden encouraged the gathering to inculcate the habit of not only washing their hands with soap but also to wash their hands off with practices that undermine good governance and good state welfare.
Registering the ministry commitments to work with such development bodies like SOS that caters for the welfare of children, Madam Blyden furthered on the theme ” making hand-washing a habit” and government commitment in working for a clean and healthy environment .
“2016 Global Hand washing Day theme is Make Hand-washing a Habit, for hand-washing to be effective it must be practiced consistently at key times, such as after using the toilet or before contact with food,” Madam Blyden stated.
As various representatives highlighted the specific impact of hand washing on key areas, such as a nutrition or education, UNICEF representative Geoff Wiffin disclosed that respiratory diseases are the major contributors to the extremely high child mortality rate.
culled from Awoko News paper
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