The development of an entertainment education program to promote handwashing with soap among primary school children in Vietnam

The Vietnam Handwashing Initiative aims to reduce disease and mortality in children through a communications program to promote handwashing with soap among caretakers of children under five and among primary school children aged six to ten years. Vietnam is one of four countries within the Water and Sanitation Program’s (WSP) Global Scaling-Up Handwashing Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on learning how to apply innovative promotional approaches to behaviour change to generate widespread and sustained improvements in handwashing with soap at scale among women of reproductive age (ages 15-49) and primary school-aged children (ages 5-9). The project is currently being implemented in Peru, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam by local and national governments with technical support from WSP. In Vietnam, the program is supported by the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and Training, and the main implementing partner is the Vietnam Women’s Union. [authors abstract]