What Gets People to Wash Their Hands?

Hand washing with soap and water is a simple way to reduce the spread of disease. It doesnt require complicated technology, its usually affordable and even young children can do it. Yet many people dont wash their hands when they should: before touching food, after using the toilet or after cleaning a babys bottom. Campaigns to remind people to wash their hands arent always successful, even in places where both soap and water are easy to find. For health experts, the problem is puzzling. Bacteria, parasites and viruses can easily spread when people dont wash their hands, putting children at risk of potentially fatal diarrheal and respiratory infections. The World Bank is committed to ending poverty and giving everyone an equal chance in life, and promoting healthy habits can help make this happen. There are so many things that can conspire to keep people poor: bad education and few jobs usually come to mind first. But poor health can be as devastating, if not more so, to a persons ability to create, find and utilize opportunities. Illness drains finances and keeps people out of school and work. For young children, the results can be deadly: diarrhea is the second leading cause of death in children under the age of 5, and this despite the fact that its both preventable and treatable. As these studies underscore, changing behavior is difficult. The two studies taken together build on existing evidence showing that handwashing campaigns must move beyond traditional mass media into more personalized and intensive programs at the community and institutional level. Further research into how such approaches can be deployed on a large scale is needed, as is a better understanding of other environmental factors and fecaloral transmission pathways that can spread illnesses. This Evidence to Policy note was jointly produced by the World Bank Group, the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF), and the British governments Department for International Development.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	World Bank
Format:	Brief biblioteca
Language:	English en_US
Published:	Washington, DC 2013-07
Subjects:	hygiene, sanitation, health practices, diarrhea,
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/07/18101050/gets-people-wash-hands https://hdl.handle.net/10986/22609
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