Saponaria takes hand washing campaign to school

Personal and home care product company, Saponaria Industries, through its ‘Sanitol- A million clean hands’ initiative, took the hand washing-campaign to children of Ilupeju Primary School in Lagos. Global Handwashing Day is marked every October 15, and dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of hand washing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.

It is usually an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people, especially children, to wash their hands at critical times.

With this year’s theme, ‘Clean hands – a recipe for health’, it focused on the links between hand washing and food – including food hygiene and nutrition.

Hand washing is an important part of keeping food safe, preventing diseases, and helping children grow strong, even as it is a vital part of cooking, eating and feeding others.

Speaking during the exercise, the Managing Director, Saponaria Industries Nigeria Limited, Ashish Misra, said that hand washing cuts the incidence of diarrhea by nearly half. “Wash your hands with soap at critical times, especially before eating, cooking, or feeding others; model good hand washing behaviour, remind and help others to always wash their hands before eating.”

He further noted that there should be established places to wash hands in the household, community, schools, work places and in health facilities as well as promote effective hand washing behaviour change in research, policy, programmes and advocacy. “The phones, computers and other devices have bacteria causing diseases. The way we prepare food and use the bathrooms may also cause bacteria to breed in our bodies. So we are basically communicating the idea of clean hands and the use of soap and water as prevention to diseases.”

Head Teacher, Ilupeju Primary School, Evelyn Omokhaye, commended the initiative, reiterating that with this, the children will be more conversant with the habit of hand washing.