Welcome to the Global Handwashing Day UK website

Clean Hands Save Lives

The practice of handwashing with soap tops the international hygiene agenda on October 15th, with the celebration of Global Handwashing Day.

Handwashing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways
to prevent diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia, which are together responsible
for the deaths, of over 3.5m children before their 5th birthday, every year.

Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash
their hands with soap at critical moments eg after going to the toilet, cleaning a
child or before handling or eating food. The challenge is to transform handwashing
with soap from an abstract good idea into an automatic behaviour performed in
homes, schools, workplaces and communities worldwide.

This would save more lives than any vaccine or medical intervention. Global
Handwashing Day is the centrepiece of a week of activities that will mobilise
millions of people across five continents to wash their hands with soap.

Children – the segment of society so often the most energetic, enthusiastic and open to new ideas – can act as agents of change by taking the ‘handwashing lessons’ learned at school back into their homes and communities. Global Handwashing Day aims to motivate children to embrace and share proper handwashing practices and place them as ‘handwashing ambassadors’ at the heart of each country’s national and local initiatives.

UK Globalhandwashing Day Activities 2009:

PooP Creative and The London International Animation Festival (LIAF) jointly promoted a competition amongst film animators to produce short films which tackle the serious issues of sanitation and / or hygiene in an edgy, irreverent and humorous way. The Golden Poo Awards are part of the Global Handwashing Day activities in the UK.

To mark World Toilet Day 2009 PooP Creative has released the comedy feature Seriously Dirty for online viewing. Presented by Dr Phil Hammond and filmed at The Golden Poo Awards on Global Handwashing Day (October 15th 2009), the film incorporates award-winning animated films about hygiene and sanitation.

 

Dirty Hands study 2009 Following the interest generated from last years study, this year we will be sampling the bacteria found on children’s hands. We will look at three different age groups, and compare levels of faecal bacteria found between age groups, and between girls and boys. We will also be investigating their views on handwashing and about germs and disease transmission.

 

E-bug is a free educational resource for classroom use which provides activities and lesson plans covering micro organisms, the transfer, prevention and treatment of infection.
Each section of e-Bug contains detailed lesson plans for teachers and fun student worksheets suitable for classroom work. There are also various downloadable animations, films, photographs and presentations available to assist with the more difficult aspects of microbiology.

 

Chisapo Secondary School in Malawi took part in a range of activities to highlight the day. The children performed plays on the theme of health and hygiene education, wrote poems and songs, and also took part in a germ awareness football match to show how easily germs can spread. Pump Aid will be linking Chisapo Secondary school in Malawi with Chandlers Field school in London, who will also be taking part in the GHD activities. The two schools will swap posters and poems completed on the day, plus they will be able to watch footage of each others activities.

CBBC Press Packer Chloe has learnt about the importance of washing hands.

 

Bugbugs Media - London’s greenest form of transport, are supporting Global Handwashing Day with complementary media space for advertising the campaign throughout the West End.

 

Global Handwashing Day Events 2008

Global Handwashing Day UK partners include: Health Protection Agency; NHS; WaterAid; PumpAid; Unilever; GSK; Unicef; Teal Wash; MAX Campaign; Global Ethics; SALT; E-bug; Health Protection Scotland; International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene; Department for International Development ; London School of Hygeine & Tropical Medicine ; PooP Creative; National Resource for Infection Control