Safeguard and Save the Children handwashing in schools partnership in Pakistan
Campbell, Dan
Safeguard and Save the Children join
hands to create handwashing history in Pakistan!
By P&G
Pakistan
Dated: Nov 03, 2009
P&G's Safeguard brand
& Save the Children partner to reach 100 schools in
Pakistan through a health
and hygiene project, benefiting 40,000 school age
children in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore with improved
sanitation facilities
& hygiene education.
Procter & Gamble’s Safeguard brand and Save
the Children announced their new partnership to reach 100
primary schools in
Pakistan through a school health and hygiene project. The project will benefit
40,000
school age children in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore with improved
sanitation facilities and health and
hygiene education.
According to
UNICEF Pakistan, “about 80% of all major diseases such as diarrhea, cholera,
typhoid,
hepatitis are due to unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation
and poor hygiene.” The incidence of
disease is greater in developing
countries such as Pakistan, where a large fraction of the population is living
in extreme conditions of poverty, with an improper sewage disposal system
and inadequate sanitation
facilities in public places including hospitals,
health centers and schools and unavailability of clean water.
According
to the Pakistan Federal Bureau of Statistics, 30% of the Pakistani population
has no access to
toilets. Further, the Federal Minister of Environment,
Hameedullah Jan Afridi, states that “inadequate
provision of pure drinking
water and sanitation facilities in schools is one of the contributing factors to
low
enrolment and the high drop out rates of girls from schools”. This is
critically important as studies have
demonstrated that in schools without
proper handwashing facilities, children are 13 times more likely to
suffer
from diarrhea. WHO states that the cheapest and most effective measure against
common illnesses is
the simple act of handwashing with soap.
Through
this partnership, Safeguard and Save the Children aim to address the incidence
of common
illnesses arising from poor sanitation facilities in school
children, and empower Pakistani children to adopt
healthy habits through
health education and improved access to handwashing, toilet and water
supply
facilities. The overall aim is to enable children and their families
to adopt better health and hygiene habits
in the long-term.
Safeguard
appeals to Pakistani mothers to help improve the lives of less affluent
children. Every bar of
Safeguard bought from October 2009 to March 2010 will
contribute towards building handwashing, toilet
and water supply facilities
in Pakistani schools where children do not have access today.
Speaking at
the launch press conference, Chief Guest, Minister of Health, Sindh, Dr.
Sagheer Ahmed
stated, “Today, we are very proud that the
private sector has stepped up and extended their full support to
the critical
issue of sanitation and hygiene, which will greatly help the cause of improving
the health of
Pakistan. According to estimates, water, sanitation and hygiene
related diseases cost Pakistan’s economy
about Rs 112 billion per year and
over Rs 300 million a day in terms of health cost and lost
earnings.
Through this partnership, Safeguard and Save the Children have
marked the critical importance of adopting
healthy and hygienic habits
through enabling access to improved sanitation facilities. We would like
to
thank the Safeguard and Save the Children teams for leading this
initiative that has the potential to save
millions of Pakistani
lives.”
Mr. Qaisar Shareef, Country Manager P&G
Pakistan, stated at the event, “P&G Pakistan is proud to have a
rich
history of helping children in need in Pakistan live, learn, and thrive: and the
Safeguard partnership
with Save the Children marks a critical step towards
improving key infrastructure in Pakistan, and thereby
positively impacting
thousands of children and their families. We are honored to have joined hands
with
one of the biggest global international development organizations, Save
the Children, to build these
facilities across Pakistan.”
“We hope
that the partnership between Save the Children and Safeguard will improve the
health of
thousands of students and enable them to stay in school,” said
Country Director of Save the Children
Pakistan. “Through Save the Children’s
school health and nutrition program, we are working closely with
parents,
teachers and students to change hygiene habits and teach the importance of
regular handwashing.”
Mubashara Khalid, the Brand
Manager for Safeguard in Pakistan, also stated at the event: “Every day,
670,000 children miss school due to illnesses. According to the Karachi Soap
Health Study (2002) led by
the Center for Disease Control (USA), HOPE and
P&G, regular handwashing with soap can reduce the
incidence of diarrhea
and common illnesses by up to 50 percent. The Safeguard-Save The Children
partnership represents Safeguard’s promise of championing the cause of a
healthy Pakistan by fostering a
culture of handwashing with soap by
providing schoolchildren with critical handwashing and sanitation
facilities
and health education. We hope to achieve long-term sustained improvement in the
health and
hygiene habits of the children and their families who are touched
through this initiative. We will be
building these facilities this year, and
are committed to provide sustainable maintenance to these facilities
for the
years to come.”
Safeguard has empowered over 6 million children in more
than 17,000 Pakistani schools through
Sehat-o-Safai, the
largest school health and hygiene awareness campaign in the country. To
reinforce its
commitment to health and hygiene, Safeguard is making this
sustainable long term investment to improve
the lives of Pakistani children
and to instill the message of the importance of handwashing with soap.
The
Safeguard team will be educating 40,000 children through this
partnership, and about 1.5 million children
overall through the Sehat-o-Safai
program this year.
Dan Campbell, Web
Manager
Environmental Health at USAID
1611 North Kent St., Suite 300
Arlington, VA 22209
Ph:
703-247-8722
Email: dcam...@usaid.gov
Environmental Health at USAID: http://www.ehproject.org
Indoor Air Pollution Updates: http://iapnews.wordpress.com
Sanitation Updates: http://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com
Urban Health Updates: http://urbanhealthupdates.wordpress.com
Cholera Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/cholera-control
Household Water Treatment Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/household-water-treatment