A global day built around a simple habit
Thursday, 15 October, is Global Handwashing Day, the annual advocacy day the Global Handwashing Partnership says it created in 2008, according to the partnership's history page, to raise awareness of handwashing with soap as a way to prevent disease, according to the partnership's own description of the day. Its current multi-year theme, "Be a Handwashing Hero!", is meant to highlight the role ordinary people, community leaders and officials play in encouraging the habit, the partnership says.
The partnership describes the day's purpose as developing and expanding approaches that motivate people to wash their hands with soap at key moments in daily life, rather than marking a single Egypt-specific event.
The gaps the day highlights are global rather than specific to any one country. Worldwide, 36 percent of schools had no hygiene service at all, based on 2016 data from 81 countries, with the heaviest concentration of gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, according to the Global Handwashing Partnership's equity page. The same page cites a 2015 World Health Organization review of 54 low- and middle-income countries that found 38 percent of healthcare facilities lacked an improved water source and 35 percent lacked water and soap for handwashing.
What a Cairo schools study found
The clearest Egypt-specific evidence of what handwashing can achieve comes from a study published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. Researchers from the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo ran a hand-hygiene programme across 30 primary schools between February and May 2008, comparing results against 30 schools that did not take part, according to the published study. The intervention schools had 20,882 students and the control schools 23,569, covering 12 weeks.
Children in the intervention schools were required to wash their hands with soap and water twice daily for about 45 seconds, backed by educational materials, the study said. Laboratory-confirmed influenza fell 50 percent in the intervention group compared with the control group, and in-class influenza-like-illness positivity was 18.4 percent in intervention schools against 34.9 percent in control schools. Absences linked to influenza-like illness dropped 40 percent, those blamed on diarrhoea fell about 30 percent, according to the study's abstract (the paper's results section put the diarrhoea figure at 33 percent), conjunctivitis-related absences fell 67 percent, and overall illness-related absences fell 21 percent, according to the study's published findings.
Egypt's underlying numbers
Diarrhoea remains the second-leading cause of death among Egyptian children under five, with between 3,500 and 4,000 such deaths recorded every year, according to UNICEF Egypt. The same UNICEF page cites 2014 data showing 96 percent of Egyptian households had a place to wash their hands, but 13 percent of rural households lacked soap or detergent at that facility.
UNICEF put the share of Egyptians without access to improved sanitation at 10 percent nationally in 2014, rising to 15 percent in rural areas against roughly 1 percent in urban areas, affecting an estimated 8.4 million people. On water specifically, 91 percent of the population received water piped directly into their homes as of 2014, though about 7.3 million people still lacked safe water access at the time — 5.8 million in rural areas and 1.5 million in urban areas. In informal urban areas, only 77 percent of households had piped water, compared with 98 percent of urban schools and 84 percent of rural schools having piped water, the same UNICEF figures show.
What UNICEF has done in schools
In September 2021, UNICEF Egypt said it had scaled up water, sanitation and hygiene support for schools in North Sinai, Ismailia and South Sinai, supporting 94 schools in North Sinai and 25 each in Ismailia and South Sinai, and rehabilitating handwashing facilities in 144 schools while supplying soap, according to UNICEF's account of the programme. The work was backed by the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, together with Egypt's Ministry of Education and Technical Education and the Egyptian Red Crescent.
Ensuring that children who are returning to learning have access to basic handwashing, clean water and proper sanitation are critical for the safe reopening and operations of schools in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. — Jeremy Hopkins, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, September 2021
Separately, UNICEF Egypt said that between mid-2013 and May 2016 it helped fund roughly 8,000 new household water connections reaching about 40,000 people, and that between mid-2013 and 2017 it improved water and sanitation facilities in 39 schools serving some 29,000 children, trained more than 190 teachers on water, sanitation and hygiene topics, and reached roughly 29,000 families through hygiene-awareness activities, according to the same UNICEF page.
Frequently asked questions
What is Global Handwashing Day?
It is an annual advocacy day, observed on 15 October, created by the Global Handwashing Partnership in 2008 to raise awareness of handwashing with soap as a way to prevent disease, according to the partnership.
Is there evidence that handwashing campaigns work in Egyptian schools?
Yes. A study run by the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo across 60 primary schools found that a twice-daily handwashing routine cut laboratory-confirmed influenza by half and reduced absences linked to diarrhoea and conjunctivitis, according to findings published in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
How many Egyptian households have somewhere to wash their hands?
UNICEF Egypt cites 2014 data showing 96 percent of Egyptian households had a handwashing facility, though 13 percent of rural households lacked soap or detergent there.
What has UNICEF done to improve hygiene in Egyptian schools?
In 2021, UNICEF said it had rehabilitated handwashing facilities in 144 schools across North Sinai, Ismailia and South Sinai and supplied soap, working with Egypt's Ministry of Education, the Egyptian Red Crescent and funding from the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
