The practice of handwashing... : paper presented at the South Asia Hygiene Practitioners Workshop, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1 to 4 February 2010

This paper explains how Hand Washing strategy has been implemented in three upazila of Jamalpur district, in north-central of Bangladesh. Here, the Dhaka Ahsania Mission carried out two programmes: the Decentralized Total Sanitation (Dishari) and the Sustainable Sanitation And Resource Mobilisation (SSARA) approach.

The paper comes up with the following recommendations:

• Long term initiatives should be undertaken for effective hand washing.
• All upazilla level government and non-government staff organizations need to work in an integrated way. For this the Government should have a policy about convey same messages by all GO and NGO personnel.
• In Upazilla health centers, doctors and health workers should give health classes for diarrhea patients about diseases from unhygienic hand (or hand washing).
• Women members of union parisad and upazila parisad can be assigned special duties to explain necessity of hand washing in their electoral areas.
• For further discussion during the Sanitation Symposium: In other countries is the practice of washing hands with soap/ash before eating also lagging far behind the practice of hand washing with soap/ash after defecation?