Lifebuoy’s school awareness campaign for global hand washing effort

Millions of school children in Sri Lanka and in more than 80 countries worldwide celebrated Global Handwashing Day in October.

Did you know that knowledge isn’t the only thing being transmitted in schools? Hands — the part of our body we feed and clean ourselves with — are covered with millions of invisible germs that cause infections and diseases, such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, cholera and dysentery. According to UNICEF, 272 million school days are lost each year across the world due to diarrhoea, but washing hands with soap after using the toilet and before eating, can reduce the chance of getting diarrhoea.

For your child, a day off school means missing out on play time with their friends, but it also means they could fall to the bottom of the class because they’re missing out on valuable lesson time.   Each day across the world the equivalent of 160 classrooms full of children die unnecessarily from diarrhoeal disease — that’s one child every 15 seconds.

So there are five good reasons to make sure kids are handwashing with soap:

1.    Healthy children learn better than sick ones
2.    Repeated bouts of diarrhoea can cause stunted growth
3.    You won’t have to spend time staying at home to look after them
4.    They’ll be able to spend more time with their friends, rather than on the toilet
5.    It could save their life.