1000 children die of diarrhoea everyday in India

The first ever Global Hand Wash Day brings this second largest killer into focus; Seeks to build in a simple life saving habit- Handwashing with soap

New Delhi, October 15th, 2008: 15th October brings together celebrities, Government representatives, Private companies, and NGOs to celebrate the inaugural launch of the first ever Global Handwashing Day in India . In a gala event that had 1500 school children taking an oath to follow the regimen of handwash to eliminate disease, the occasion saw the Smt. Shantha Sheela Nair, Secretary, (Drinking Water Supply), Ministry of Rural Development, ace Bollywood director, Farah Khan, cricket star Yuvraj Singh, child star Zain 'Hari Puttar' Khan, all pledging their allegiance to the cause .

Every day India loses around 1,000 children to diarrhoea due to poor hygiene and water borne infections. This means 41 children die every 60 minutes due to this highly preventable disease. Globally, every year, more than 3.5 million children do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday because of diarrhoea and pneumonia. According to WHO, diarrhoea alone kills almost 2 million children every year, making it the second leading killer of children worldwide. And one out of every five of these children who die of diarrhoea is an Indian!

A simple personal hygiene habit - washing hands with soap - could halve this figure. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, hand washing with soap is seldom practiced and not always easy to promote. The inaugural Global Hand Washing Day (GHWD) is slated to be on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 and attempts at putting this often overlooked hygiene challenge at the forefront of the international health and hygiene agenda.

An initiative of a coalition between public and private partners who together form the Public-Private Partnership for Hand Washing (PPPHW) (www.globalhandwashing.org) GHD will be the centre piece of activities that will mobilise millions of people in more than 20 countries across five continents to wash their hands with soap. Millions of children in 20 countries across 5 continents joined hands to encourage hand washing with soap on the first-ever Global Handwashing Day (15 October 08).

In India this coalition has been formed between Hindustan Unilever's Lifebuoy, FXB India Suraksha, AFPRO, Plan India and Wateraid. According to Nitin Paranjpe, CEO & MD, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. "We at Lifebuoy- a global brand with 110 years experience of hygiene - will be employing our expertise in changing consumer behaviour. We will work towards making Global Handwashing Day drive behaviour change throughout the world and ensures that handwashing with soap becomes a life-saving habit. Partnerships between the public and private sector will be essential if United Nations' Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved. The Global Handwashing Day coalition is an excellent example of these partnerships in action."

Hand washing plays an important part in the efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals relating to health improvements, education and the reduction of poverty and child mortality, as well as access to and effective use of water supply and sanitation services. These were agreed to by UN member countries at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. The practice of hand washing with soap tops the international hygiene agenda, and Global Handwashing Day spotlights this important issue in the year that the UN General Assembly has designated 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation (IYS).

PPPHW has thus chosen 2008 to launch the international Global Hand Washing Day initiative to promote hand washing with soap, and in turn to promote improved hygiene practices and draw attention to the world's enormous sanitation challenge. Stepping up investment in hand washing will be crucial to meet the child health targets set by the UN. This will be implemented through large-scale hand washing interventions by combining the expertise and resources of the soap industry, with the facilities and resources of the government. According to Mr Gourisankar Ghosh, CEO, FXB Suraksha " and former Executive Director of Water and Sanitation Collaborative Council in Geneva , globally it has been seen that greater success can be achieved in causes when one integrates the powerful grassroot networks of NGOs with the social marketing and communication finesse of private organisations. That in essence is the true spirit of a Public-Private Partnership." Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash their hands with soap at critical moments (for example, after using the toilet, while cleaning a child, and before handling food). Water borne diseases like Diarrhoea is both preventable and treatable, yet families in developing countries continue to pay the price of this disease in lost lives, missed school days, reduced resistance to infections, impaired growth, malnutrition and poverty.

When coupled with educational initiatives, hand washing with soap is one of the world's most cost-effective preventive health interventions and has been proven to reduce the risk of not only diarrhoea and pneumonia, which together are responsible for the majority of child deaths, but also some of its more severe manifestations, such as cholera and dysentery, by 48-59 percent. The Global Hand Washing Day aims to bring about a change by raising awareness with children, school teachers and parents who will join celebrities, government officials, NGO ambassadors and members of the private sector to call for proper hygiene practices across the world and raise awareness that hand washing with soap is a powerful public health intervention.

Like Bollywood director Farha Khan, also mother to triplets summed up " GHD immediately caught my attention as a mother of 3 young babies. To know that Diarrhoea is a second largest killer of kids below 5 is scary. If as a mother I can spread the message of health and hygiene on such a innovative Public private Partnership Platform, I think I too would in a small way, contribute to fighting against the disease"

About Global Hand Wash Day (GHWD)

Global Handwashing Day is a platform to create a global culture of washing hands with soap. Lifebuoy, in partnership with the coalition, will be launching the inaugural Global Hand Wash Day in India on 15th October, 2008, even as 20 other countries across 5 continents do the same across the world.

Every year million of children across the world don't live to celebrate their fifth birthday. The objective of establishing Global hand washing day is to control communicable fatal disease like diarrhea and pneumonia.

Handwashing with soap is a significant contribution to meeting the UN Millennium Development goal of reducing death among children under age of five by two-third by 2015.

Vision on Global Handwashing Day is to foster global and local culture of handwashing with soap which is also the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia.

About Public-Private Partnership for Hand washing with Soap (PPPHW)

In India , the PPPHW has started with FXB India Suraksha, WaterAid, AFPRO, Plan India and Hindustan Unilever's Lifebuoy.

Its aims are to: reduce the incidence of diarrhea and pneumonia in poor communities through public-private partnerships promoting hand washing with soap; support its partners' large scale, national hand washing interventions and promote replication of successful approaches at the global level; and share scientific evidence showing hand washing with soap to be an exceptionally efficacious and cost effective health intervention. The PPPHW harnesses the marketing skills of industry and the capacities of the public sector in a program that aims to save the lives of children.

Solus Media