Happy Global Handwashing Day!

As if you didn't already know today was Global Handwashing Day. Ha ha!

As a leader of a project that puts a huge emphasis on encouraging proper handwashing behavior here in rural Kenya, I'm proud to say that the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health elected to hold its national Global Handwashing Day celebration right here in Busia, to acknowledge the gains seen in hygiene behaviors and the dropping diarrheal disease rates in our province. This means we had the privilege of having 15,000 Kenyan school children and the Kenyan Public Health Minister descend upon our tiny town for five hours today, making presentations, giving speeches, singing songs...until the Minister decided five hours in Busia was quite enough for her, thank you very much, and jetted back to Nairobi several hours ahead of schedule. (Also yes, there was actually a competition to see which primary school could come up with the best handwashing song. The clear winner, in my eyes at least, was the class from Segere that educated all of us on the health benefits of handwashing by chanting all the diseases that could be prevented by proper handwashing behavior: "Cholera! Typhoid! Influenza! Measles!" They might have gotten beat by the class that set their song to a complete step routine...if they hadn't also done the whole thing as a round.)

But seriously guys, handwashing is, like, really important. According to figures from the World Bank and UNICEF, washing hands with soap at critical times (after going to the bathroom, before eating and cooking, etc.) can reduce diarrheal disease by 45% and acute respiratory infection by 30%, and can increase newborn survival rates by up to 44%, making it more effective than any single vaccine in terms of the number of infections prevented! For those of you who are still awake after that sentence, here is an exclusive look at one of the ways WASH Benefits, my project, is trying to improve the health of children in rural Kenya. Each of these "tippy tap" handwashing stations costs less than $2 to build and can be constructed entirely from materials available in any Kenyan village. I suspect you may have to settle for Home Depot.

Action shot!

Obviously, disease prevention is a lot more difficult than handing out some cans, poles, and string. Getting people to change their behavior, to invest in soap, and to keep their stations in good working order is a tremendous challenge, and a lot of my work so far has been geared toward facilitating that type of behavior change. So far, though, they've been a big hit (I hear that tippy taps are going to be a hot new lawn feature next summer--here's your chance to beat the curve.) More info is available at the official website of Global Handwashing Day. If you go to their "Resources" page, the top two articles were both written by professors on my project. No big deal.

I hope you all take time to wash your hands many times today, and to remember that on this day, countless kids around the world are learning to keep themselves and their families healthier, pledging to practice better hygiene in their homes and schools, and singing about diarrhea at the top of their lungs.