Going beyond serving as a reminder of the importance of the cause such a day symbolises, every special day is an occasion is a nudge to up the game to realise the objectives of the day through creation of awareness and pursuit of action.
Every annual national and international day has a purpose. Going beyond serving as a reminder of the importance of the cause such a day symbolises, the occasion is a nudge to up the game to realise the objectives of the special day through creation of awareness and pursuit of action. The Children’s Day is an apt occasion to focus on children’s health. One of the cross-cutting key issues impacting children’s health is hand hygiene. This special edition of Outlook is dedicated to handwashing.
Practising hand hygiene has become part of daily lives as a result of the learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic. The increased awareness about the advantages of hand hygiene needs to be converted into positive behaviour change, which has to be sustained. It is also an imperative that all people, especially the poor ones, have access to clean water and soap. The seriousness and passion with which eminent doctors like Dr Randeep Guleria or Dr Naresh Trehan talk about handwashing are testimony to its importance in healthcare.
While handwashing may seem a minor and mundane activity, which does not deserve the same attention as measures related to averting critical lifestyle diseases, its impacts are far-reaching. We saw the benefits during the coronavirus, and this was buttressed by evidence from research. Its role in significantly bringing down the incidence of diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections, which are two main causes of death in young children, is known, as Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh of WHO reminds us in a thought-provoking column.
Handwashing with water and soap is not merely about improving health. It impacts productivity, GDP growth and a host of related aspects of life. One of the sub-indicators of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 deals with clean water and sanitation. Handwashing impacts other SDGs related to poverty, hunger, health, gender, work and economic growth and inequalities, too.
Even the business case is equally strong. The return on investment is more compared to that of other interventions like toilet construction and immunisation. From the self-interest point of view, hand hygiene lays another layer to the foundation of an emerging self-care lifestyle movement, which was evident and beneficial during the recent life-changing experiences. It is time for all of us to do whatever we can in this direction and play a responsible role as community members in our self-interest. Each of us is safe only as long as the others—in fact, all of us—are safe.
Handwashing impact goes beyond SDGs and economics, since it is a unifier of faith leaders across religions. A case in point is the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance run by influencers like Swami Chidanand Saraswati and Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, who we feature in this issue. They have brought together various faith leaders on a common platform to highlight the importance of handwashing, which is mentioned in the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures as well as the Quran and the Bible. Such initiatives can even open up avenues of promoting lasting peace for shared interests. The pandemic taught us survival lessons; occasions like Children’s Day can help us enhance our life skills.