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UNICEF: Everything you Need to Know about Washing your Hands [eng]

UNICEF offers a short guide on everything you need to know about washing your hands in the context of COVID-19.

«Respiratory viruses like coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread when mucus or droplets containing the virus get into your body through your eyes, nose or throat. Most often, this happens through your hands. Hands are also one of the most common ways that the virus spreads from one person to the next.

During a global pandemic, one of the cheapest, easiest, and most important ways to prevent the spread of a virus is to wash your hands frequently with soap and water.

Read the guidance here 

Effect of Two Complementary Mass-Scale Media Interventions on Handwashing with Soap among Mothers

Poor handwashing behavior is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. We evaluated two complementary mass-scale media interventions targeting mothers to increase the frequency of handwashing with soap; one using TV advertising, and the other mobile phone messaging.

For TVCs, there were higher rates of handwashing with soap at key occasions in the first (RR: 1.33, p = .002) and second (RR: 1.26, p = .041) of three treatment arms, or 0.4 additional handwashes with soap on key occasions daily. In the mobile study, new mothers (adj-RR: 1.04, p = .035) and general mothers (RR: 1.07, p = .007) receiving the intervention were more likely to wash their hands with soap on key occasions than those in the control group, corresponding to 1.3 and 1.0 more occasions daily. These interventions were associated with significantly greater handwashing with soap, consistent with the hypothesis that branded mass communications can impact habitual lifestyle behaviors relevant to public health.

 

Click here to read more.

Radio Waves and Zambia Speaks! How support to local radio stations empowers social change (BBC Media Action case study, 2019)

BBC Media Action has been supporting 15 local radio stations across Zambia to cover local governance issues and improve accountability in the delivery of critical services including education, sanitation and access to water through two projects: Radio Waves (since 2014) and Zambia Speaks! (since 2016).

This case study shows how the programmes helped to improve engagement between citizens and local authorities, resulting in examples of governance issues being addressed, as verified by listeners, station staff and local stakeholders.

Click here for more detail and full case study.

National Social and Behaviour Change Communication Strategy for Integrated Early Childhood Development, Nutrition and WASH 2018 — 2024 (Government of Rwanda, 2018)

The National SBCC Strategy will build on the integration of Early Children Development, Nutrition and WASH sectors which provides opportunities of benefiting from integrated ECD, nutrition and WASH social behavior and communication services aiming at improving knowledge, attitude and practices at community and household levels.

This strategy seeks to address key determinants related to early children development, malnutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) mostly related to knowledge, attitude and practices at community and individual levels. There are many impediments within the health systems that prevent people from having productive and healthy lives. Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) addresses key barriers preventing people from adopting improved health practices. The Early Children Development, nutrition and WASH sectors within the health system can benefit positively from an SBCC strategy.

ECD, Nutrition and WASH have multi-sectoral dimensions that require contributions from different disciplines including but not limited to agriculture, economic strengthening, public health, gender, medicine, and social science. The theories and models fromthese different domains can be extracted to develop and deliver effective behavior change communications particularly in the context of promoting positive ECD, nutritional and WASH related practices at household and community level in Rwanda. By addressing key barriers related to ECD, Nutrition and WASH by promoting Community and Household integrated best practices, this will ensure optimum health status of the population of Rwanda.

Engaging Community Members to Adopt Effective WASH Practices for Nutrition (SPRING brief, 2017)

The first 1,000 days, the period from pregnancy to two years of age, are critical for early childhood development. During this time, children are especially vulnerable to stunting, an irreversible condition that can result in lifelong cognitive and physical deficits. In 2011, stunting, or low height-for-age, affected more than 165 million children worldwide (Black et al. 2013). Mounting evidence indicates that poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices contribute significantly to stunting. Improving WASH practices reduces diarrheal disease, environmental enteric
dysfunction, and soil-transmitted helminth (parasitic worm) infections. Combined, these reductions contribute to decreases in stunting.

In Ghana, stunting is a particularly serious challenge. According to the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS), 19 percent of Ghanaian children under the age of 5 are stunted. Among the regions with the highest rates of stunting is the Northern Region, where the prevalence is 33 percent (GDHS 2014). WASH practices in many parts of the country contribute to this problem. The majority of households (93 percent) do not treat their drinking water by any method (GDHS 2014), while only 14 percent use an improved toilet facility that is not shared with other
households (GDHS 2014). In the two weeks preceding the 2014 GDHS survey, the overall rate of diarrhea reported among children under five was 12 percent, a figure which tends to vary seasonally.

The SPRING project is a seven-year USAID-funded cooperative agreement to strengthen global and country efforts to scale up high-impact nutrition practices and policies and improve maternal and child nutrition outcomes. SPRING has worked for three years in Ghana, where USAID has tasked it with helping to prevent stunting and reduce anemia in the Feed the Future Zone of Influence in 15 districts in the Upper East and Northern Regions.

SPRING’s “WASH 1,000” strategy promotes focused, evidence-based WASH behaviors to eliminate common fecal-oral contamination pathways in children during the first 1,000 days. The strategy takes an integrated, multi-sectoral approach, simultaneously delivering products, services, and information to households with pregnant and lactating women and those with children under two (i.e., 1,000-day households).

Click here for full brief.

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