A global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of hand washing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.

Global Handwashing Day is an annual global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.

Handwashing with soap is an easy, effective, and affordable do-it-yourself protection that prevents infections and saves lives.

Handwashing with Soap is Easy

Everyone can protect themselves, their families, and their communities through handwashing with soap. It requires few resources—just soap and a small amount of water—yet the benefits are huge.

Handwashing with Soap is Effective

When handwashing with soap is practiced regularly at key times, such as after using the toilet or before contact with food, it can dramatically reduce the risk of diarrhea and pneumonia, which can cause serious illness and death. Handwashing with soap also helps prevent the spread of other infections such as influenza and Ebola.

Handwashing with Soap is Affordable

Cost is not the principal barrier to handwashing with soap. Almost everyone in the world can afford multipurpose bar soap, or detergent to make soapy water, though recent surveys have found a soap access equity gap, meaning the world’s poorest households are less likely to have access to soap. Furthermore households which do have access to soap commonly use it for laundry, dish washing or bathing, rather than for handwashing. Investments in hand washing promotion are very cost effective, and can also maximize the health benefits of other interventions from access to clean water and sanitation infrastructure to nutrition promotion.

Source of Info: http://globalhandwashing.org/global-handwashing-day/

Hand washing is easy to do and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of many types of infection and illness in all settings—from our home and workplace to child care facilities and hospitals. Clean hands can stop germs from spreading from one person to another and throughout an entire community.

Learn more about when and how to wash your hands.

When should you wash your hands?

• Before, during, and after preparing food
• Before eating food
• Before and after caring for someone who is sick
• Before and after treating a cut or wound
• After using the toilet
• After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet
• After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
• After touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste
• After touching garbage

What is the right way to wash your hands?

• Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
• Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Be sure to lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
• Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Need a timer? Hum the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning to end twice.
• Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.

SOURCE OF INFORMATION

CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

• Ageism is the stereotyping and discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age; ageism can take many forms, including prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory practices, or institutional policies and practices that perpetuate stereotypical beliefs. 

1st October is the United Nations International Day of Older Persons. The theme for this year’s day is “Take A Stand Against Ageism”. Ageism, the stereotyping and discrimination against people on the basis of age, which causes serious social prejudice with significant consequences for older people.

• Today, there are around 600 million people aged 60 years and over worldwide. This number will double by 2025 and will reach two billion by 2050, with the vast majority of older people in the developing world.
• Ageism is widely prevalent and stems from the assumption that all members of a group (for example older adults) are the same. Like racism and sexism, ageism serves a social and economic purpose: to legitimize and sustain inequalities between groups. It’s not about how we look. It’s about how people that have influence, assign meaning to how we look. In 2014, governments around the world recognized ageism as “the common source of, the justification for, and the driving force behind age discrimination.”
• Negative ageist attitudes are widely held across societies and not confined to one social or ethnic group. Research suggests that ageism may now be even more pervasive than sexism and racism. This has serious consequences both for older people and society at large. For example ageism limits the questions that are asked and the way problems are conceptualized and is hence a major barrier to developing good policies.

• Ageism has harmful effects on the health of older adults. Research shows that older adults with negative attitudes about ageing may live 7.5 years less than those with positive attitudes.
• Ageism has been shown to cause cardiovascular stress, lowered levels of self-efficacy and decreased productivity.
• Negative attitudes are also widely present even within the health and social-care settings where older adults are at their most vulnerable.
• Some of this prejudice arises from observable biological declines and may be distorted by awareness of disorders such as dementia, which may be mistakenly thought to reflect normal ageing.
• Ageism can become self-fulfilling by promoting in older people stereotypes of social isolation, physical and cognitive decline, lack of physical activity and economic burden.
• Negative attitudes about providing long-term care for those who need it also make it difficult to recruit paid care workers in many countries. This may reflect ageism in the broader culture, the tendency to equate long-term care with poor-quality working conditions, or the low status accorded to caregiving.

• Tackling ageism will require a new understanding of ageing by all generations. This understanding needs to counter outdated concepts of older people as burdens, and acknowledge the wide diversity of the experience of older age, the inequities of ageism, and demonstrate a willingness to ask how society might organise itself better.

• Promotion of family planning – and ensuring access to preferred contraceptive methods for women and couples – is essential to securing the well-being and autonomy of women, while supporting the health and development of communities.
• Preventing pregnancy-related health risks in women: A woman’s ability to choose if and when to become pregnant has a direct impact on her health and well-being. Family planning allows spacing of pregnancies and can delay pregnancies in young women at increased risk of health problems and death from early childbearing. It prevents unintended pregnancies, including those of older women who face increased risks related to pregnancy. Family planning enables women who wish to limit the size of their families to do so. Evidence suggests that women who have more than 4 children are at increased risk of maternal mortality.
  By reducing rates of unintended pregnancies, family planning also reduces the need for unsafe abortion.
• Reducing infant mortalityFamily planning can prevent closely spaced and ill-timed pregnancies and births, which contribute to some of the world’s highest infant mortality rates. Infants of mothers who die as a result of giving birth also have a greater risk of death and poor health.
• Helping to prevent HIV/AIDSFamily planning reduces the risk of unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV, resulting in fewer infected babies and orphans. In addition, male and female condoms provide dual protection against unintended pregnancies and against STIs including HIV.
• Empowering people and enhancing educationFamily planning enables people to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health. Family planning represents an opportunity for women to pursue additional education and participate in public life, including paid employment in non-family organizations. Additionally, having smaller families allows parents to invest more in each child. Children with fewer siblings tend to stay in school longer than those with many siblings.
• Reducing adolescent pregnancies
  Pregnant adolescents are more likely to have preterm or low birth-weight babies. Babies born to adolescents have higher rates of neonatal mortality. Many adolescent girls who become pregnant have to leave school. This has long-term implications for them as individuals, their families and communities.
• Slowing population growth
  Family planning is key to slowing unsustainable population growth and the resulting negative impacts on the economy, environment, and national and regional development efforts.

Contraceptive methods (World Health Organization)

Modern methods

Related Posts: 

• National Family Planning Program, Nepal
• National Family Planning Day (18- Sep 2016)
• Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) Commitment, Nepal