The impact of ‘Wash campaign’ started by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in September 2012 is now visible among the students. Students of Government schools are inculcating the habit of washing their hands before meal as their daily routine. Teachers are also taking keen interest in educating their students about the importance of hygiene. Manish Bhagat, student of Rajyakrit Primary school said, “Though we are provided contaminated food even with insects in it but still we wash our hand before having our meal”.
“Our teachers do not provide us food unless we wash our hands with soap for 15 seconds”, said Ashish, another student. “A dirty hand has nearly one crore viruses, simply washing your hands with water is not enough, they need to be cleaned thoroughly with soap our teachers told us,” he added.
Scant attention is paid to the simple act of washing hands. So the teachers of Government schools are now taking keen interest in injecting knowledge within their students about the importance of maintaining personnel hygiene.
“Washing our hand after a visit to the toilet or before we eat is a no-brainer. But we do not practice it thoroughly. It’s a habit so passive, that we keep ignoring it without understanding the health risk our contaminated hands invite, so our school staff has decided that we will take strong step towards inculcating the habit of washing hands with soap regularly before their meal and that is the reason we do not provide them meal before washing their hands”, said Muktar Singh, Principal of Rajkrit Primary School.
UNICEF started a wash campaign in the month of September 2012, it was a two and half month campaign. The aim of this campaign was to promote health and hygiene among the students. It is showing positive result among the students of aided schools.
Ward Specialist of UNICEF, Somnath Basu, said, “After this campaign, in schools it has now become a part of their regular activities, when we go to different schools for spot visit we find that students have accepted this activity in many places, but there are some such schools also who do not educate their students on hand washing. So now we are planning to make sure that every school make their student practice this habit positively and for this 100 schools have been selected which will be monitored by us”.