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PHASE: now wash your hands!

Every year three million people globally die of diarrhoeal disease, most of them children. It is one of the world's biggest killers, yet one of the most easily preventable.

It is probably one of the simplest forms of disease prevention. And perhaps the easiest to forget to do. Yet hand-washing is simple act of personal hygiene that can have a massive impact on health and well-being.

In the developing world, poor healthcare provision can lead to children suffering from diarrhoeal disease and parasitic infections that are easily spread from child to child. Even if not fatal, these conditions can affect a child’s future through poor school attendance.

PHASE: Personal Hygiene And Sanitation Education
That’s why GlaxoSmithKline developed PHASE – Personal Hygiene And Sanitation Education - a simple hand-washing programme designed to teach children how to prevent the spread of germs and parasites.

After a pilot project in Kenya in 1998, the PHASE programme has been introduced in other countries and has been recognised by the United Nations as a valuable intervention in helping to meet the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000.

By working closely with non-government organisations including Save the Children and AMFREF (African Medical and Research Foundation) as well as Ministries of Health, PHASE has developed a low cost and effective educational programme.

Hand-washing for health
The key to the programme is a simple hand-washing and personal hygiene routine. This is taught to children using cloth books and story cards,that contain images which relate directly to their daily lives, and make learning fun.

Teachers and community leaders are also taught the basic techniques and children are encouraged to share what they have learnt with others.

PHASE has reduced diarrhoeal-related diseases linked to poor hygiene and is improving children’s overall health and well-being. In Nicaragua, the frequency of hand-washing amongst pupils after using the latrine increased fivefold and the proportion of children reporting diarrhoea in a two week period fell dramatically from over 40 per cent to just 13 per cent during a five year study.

More than just hand-washing
In some communities, many people have become involved in improving their local sanitation infrastructure in their home and villages. For example, in Kenya, it has become standard practice to provide hand-washing facilities and separate toilets for boys and girls in many of the participating schools.

PHASE partnerships have helped to create a closer connection between families, schools and local communities. Many of the schemes have now become national. In Peru, the PHASE materials and methodology are now used in a 1,200 primary schools in the country.

The success of the programme is summed up by a parent from Bondo in Kenya:

“In my view, PHASE has done a lot in my household because I had children who were sickly due to diseases caused by poor hygiene, but now they have improved so much. I have also received a lot of information from children regarding this project from AMREF. So I can see a lot of changes.”

 

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