Wash your hands, as UN wishes you good health

Shishir Kumar
Ranchi

I'm a hygiene freak. I'm like obsessive-compulsive when it comes to washing your hands. - Kelly Clarkson

Tuesday would be a day when the United Nation wishes each and every individual of the world to be like pop singer Clarkson, not for her singing but for her views mentioned above.

The first-ever Global Handwashing Day would take place on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. Jharkhand has too geared up for the celebration of the occasion as the UNICEF and the state government has joined their hands for the same in the state.

The UN General Assembly has designated 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, and Global Handwashing Day will echo and reinforce its call for improved hygiene practices, claims the UN website.

Global Handwashing Day will be the centerpiece of a week of activities that will mobilize millions of people in more than 20 countries across five continents to wash their hands with soap.

Around one millions of children in 20 countries across 5 continents will join hands to encourage handwashing with soap on the first-ever global handwashing day.

“Every 20 seconds, a mother mourns a dead child lost to diarrhoea - a completely preventable and utterly inexcusable cause of death. But the problem can be saved. A simple hygiene habit – washing hands with soap – can save lives,” claimed an official of Health Department.

“The day is a bid to promote improved hygiene practices, globally and locally, and draw attention to the world’s enormous sanitation challenge. Handwashing plays an important part in the efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals relating to health improvements, education, and the reduction of poverty and child mortality, as well as access and effective use of water supply and sanitation services agreed to by UN member countries at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. Stepping up investment in handwashing will be crucial to meet the child health targets set by the UN,” claimed a UNICEF official.

While the government and the NGOs working in Jharkhand have all geared up for the formalities of the occasion, the common mass is however unknown of any such day. “What? There is no such day. It must be a bad joke some one has cracked. What is it handwashing, teeth brushing and bathing day – it is sheer non-sense,” Alok, a student of an elite educational institute of Ranchi said.

On Global Handwashing Day the children, school teachers, and parents will join celebrities, government officials, NGO ambassadors, and members of the private sector to call for proper hygiene practices and raise awareness that handwashing with soap is a powerful public health intervention, a UNICEF official said.