Pupils make handwashing fun to keep healthy

Pupils at Thogoto Primary School washing hands

By Elisha Kamau

It is 11:00am at Thogoto Primary School in Kikuyu County and pupils are enjoying their usual break period. While some of them are playing in the dusty grounds under the scorching sun, others are busy washing hands from strategically placed plastic containers.

The five-litre containers hanged outside each class, at accessible positions prove to the most cost effective way to ensure good hygiene practice within the school.

“We realized that many children were keen to wash hands with soap and water especially after playing and visiting the toilets. Since our water supply could not meet the rising demand, we had to come up with a cost effective way to motivate our pupils to wash hands,” says Job Momanyi, a handwashing champion teacher at the school.

The leaky tins, as they are popularly called, have been a common feature ever since Thogoto Primary School participated in the  Lifebuoy School of 5 Hand washing campaign.

“The pupils have gone ahead to ensure availability of soap through their monthly contribution of Kshs. 2 each,” he notes.

Championed by Unilever and Water Sanitation for the Urban Poor, a Non Governmental Organization, the campaign played a key role in impacting knowledge on teachers on importance of hand washing.

The teachers were in turn mandated to pass the gained knowledge to the pupils by encouraging them to wash hands on five key occasions– before breakfast, before lunch, before supper and after visiting the toilet within the school environment and at bath time at home.

Momanyi explains that each class has two champion pupils (little doctors as they call them) who ensure that the containers are filled with water every time while the other is the custodian of soap in his/her class. To create ownership amongst pupils, pupils are assigned to bring a jerican of water to the school in turns.

“Every time any pupil visits the toilet, he is given soap and water and is latter directed to the leaky tin to wash hands,” he says.

In Kakamega East County, Edith Khatenje, a hand washing champion teacher at St. Kizito Shihingo School says that the leaky tin feature has also been adopted by neighboring schools as the most cost effective way to keep diseases at bay through washing hands with soap and water.

Over the years, hand washing has proved key in reducing water borne diseases such as diarrhea that may affect pupils’ concentration in school.

Chief Public Health Officer at the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, Dr. Kepha Ombacho says that Kenya looses close to 30,000 lives through diarrhea annually, the second global killer after malaria.

Dr. Myriam Sidibe, Lifebuoy Global Social Mission Director holding a PhD in Hand washing says that good hand washing is a top defense against the spread of many illnesses, from sore throat, common cold, acute respiratory infections to more serious illnesses such as influenza and most types of infectious diarrhea.

“It’s better to keep diseases at bay through simple washing of hands than visiting the health facility every now and then,” she says.

To ensure sustainability of the programme, some of the participating schools have come up with skits that they perform at the assembly ground on Friday’s on the importance of handwashing with soap borrowing heavily from a School of 5 activity book with cartoon characters on handwashing that children now read as story books at their free time.

Despite the water challenge in various schools, these schools have beat the odds to turn handwashing into a fun and memorable idea thereby inculcating the hygiene habit into the lives of this young one at a tender age.

Various brands are committed in such efforts – SOPO handwashing campaign by UNICEF, Unilever through its Lifebuoy brand that have a Global Social Mission of making hand washing an automated habit to eight million Kenyans by 2015.

How to wash hands correctly

• Wet your hands with running water and ensure that all areas of your hands have water.
• Apply soap till it lathers, this can take an average of 10 seconds.
• Rub in between your fingers where you are likely to find the greatest percentage of germs for less than 20 seconds. This is followed by the back of the hands, thumbs, wrist area and palm.
• With clean running water, you then rinse your hands with the latter pointed towards to avoid water splashing unto your clothes and shoes.
• Rinse them with a clean dry towel or simply air-dry them to the air.