Home hygiene and the prevention of infectious disease in developing countries : a responsibility for all

Introduction to the Proceedings of the 2nd IFH international conference: home hygiene and the prevention of infectious disease in developing countries: a responsibility for all, New Delhi, India, 15-16 April 2002. The conference supplement of this issue of International Journal of Environmental Health Research contains the papers, which were presented at the conference. In the first session, an overview session, the potential for infection transmission in the home was reviewed. Other papers in this session included a situational analysis of water, sanitation and hygiene firstly in India and then in the South East Asia region as a whole, together with a paper which evaluated cost – benefit assessments as a means of defining priorities for action. The overview session was followed by sessions devoted to each of the main areas of home hygiene, namely hygiene practice in the domestic and peri-domestic settings, hand washing, water, sanitation, and food hygiene. For each hygiene area, the related issues, solutions and benefits were evaluated in a keynote paper, which was followed by papers evaluating case histories of intervention measures and other community projects.