NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 16 – The donation of 60 hand washing stations together with liquid soap by the Shining Hope For Communities (SHOFCO) to the County of Nairobi could not have come at the right time for the city residents like October 15, the Global Hand Washing Day.
This also comes at a time when diarrhearial disease case incidence across the City has declined by 31 percent in the last six months.
Dr. Ouma Oluga, the Director of health at the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) said this is going to push further down diarrhearial diseases; other hygiene related conditions and respiratory ailments.
“We can attribute the reduction of diarrhearial diseases especially among children directly to promotion of hygiene; use of sanitisers – particularly the gold standard which is hand washing with soap and water,” he said at a function hosted by SHOFCO.
He said the improved culture of hand washing among populations in the city mainly due to Covid-19 is something good, and not just about diarrhearial diseases, but a while lot of ailments.
“We have seen a reduction in all those conditions,” he noted saying that people can now access water in the informal settlements with SHOFCO’s water and sanitation programme, which is availing thousands of litres of water.
Previously, he noted that it was difficult to access water but with the ongoing expansion of ground water delivery in the NMS and SHOFCO’s WASH programme, this has become possible.
“We have seen a huge behavioural change among the city’s populations,” he said.
Even though the global hand washing day is something that has been promoted every year, Dr. Oluga noted that with Covid and the intense campaigns to educate people how to wash their hands properly coupled by the availability of water, the situation is changing.
He said the Global Hand Washing Day is just a reminder on the value of hygiene and the impact of a commodity called water.
“When you avail water for the global hand washing campaign, you are also availing it to support livelihoods,” he noted.
Dr. Oluga said the day is also a reminder of the inequalities that exist in the world.
“We call upon institutions that are availing the water to the most vulnerable to ensure that people get water,” he said.
NMS has dug 193 boreholes across Nairobi in the last one year, with a goal to provide the city residents with sufficient safe water.
SHOFCO Chief Operating Officer, Caroline Kisia said the organisation’s objective of providing hand washing stations is to make it easier and convenient for people to wash hands.
“We have seen that as part of the Covid prevention during this Covid pandemic period, washing hands and hand hygiene is very important in making sure that we stop the spread of Corona,” she said.
As an extension of hand washing and hygiene during the pandemic period, Kisia notes that there has been a reduction in the diarrhoearial diseases that are being seen in many different health facilities.
“So we continue to encourage hand hygiene, and proper washing of hands to reduce the spread of Covid and other diarrhearial diseases,” she added.
She agreed with the other promoters of hygiene that now more than ever, people are embracing hand washing.
A look at the informal settlements, larticularly where Shofco works a lot, you find that Covid spread has not been as high as was initially feared, she observed pointing out that part of the reason for that is the observance of the various Covid protocols.
“Covid has highlighted the importance of hand washing and the importance of hygiene, and the benefits of that are seen even beyond the prevention of Covid,” she noted.
Previously, Kisia pointed out there were many children under 5 who presented with diarrhearial diseases, but nowadays that has reduced significantly.
She attributed this scenario to the improved hand hygiene and the washing of hands that has sort of become routine.
“Today being the global hand washing day, we want to make sure we emphasise and re-emphasise that,” she stated.
On his part, Eric Yinda, the NMS WASH coordinator, the global hand washing day is an opportunity to promote hand washing and an occasion when hygiene promoters ensure that the practice of hand washing is inculcated in people.
“What we do is to ensure that there is a compatible infrastructure that would help our population to wash hands at critical times. So today we are commemorating hand washing day as usual, which targets school going children, but our population is different today as we are targeting communities,” he noted.
He said that despite the fact that hand washing currently is being promotes as a key practice towards the prevention of Covid-19 spread, hand washing using safe and running water is now also targeting to eliminate other hygiene diseases.
“Even though today’s event targets mainly school going children, but with emerging and re-emerging issues in the world, we saw to it that we must reach all the populations with small doable actions at the community level,” he added.
He said the number of people that were coming to the health facilities presenting with hygiene related diseases has gone down drastically.
“We can attest this to hand washing because we never had facilities for hand washing,” he noted.
Out of 100 patients, he said 50 were complaining of diarrhearial diseases, but now it is about 10-15, meaning that the number has dropped significantly.