Title: For hygiene
Course: Hygiene and Environmental Health Part 2 - Ethiopia (Full)

For hygiene

Providing safe water and encouraging people to practise good hygiene will achieve massive health benefits. For example, the Shigella bacterium causes dysentery or bloody diarrhoea and it is a major contributor to the millions of water-related deaths each year. However, the simple step of washing hands with soap and water will significantly reduce shigellosis and other diarrhoeal diseases. Moreover, providing clean water for washing can prevent trachoma, which is the leading cause of preventable blindness.

Why is hand hygiene so important for reducing communicable diseases?

Show answer

Our hands can be soiled by many different contaminants, for example, while visiting a toilet, during farming activities, cleaning children's bottoms and so on; hence washing hands with soap and water is very important.