Hygiene education

Using clean water to wash cooking utensils can reduce the risk of contamination.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Penn

Hygiene education, or hygiene promotion, encourages people to replace their unsafe hygiene practices with simple, safe alternatives.

Most people are only too happy to use clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing once it is readily available.

But other hygiene practices are also crucial in preventing water and sanitation related diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid that result in two million deaths a year.

These practices include the safe disposal of children's faeces and safe drinking water storage. In many parts of the developing world these are not traditionally associated with disease prevention and therefore require active promotion within water and sanitation projects.

WaterAid and its partners use many ways to promote good hygiene practices and all are based upon the individual community's existing knowledge, beliefs and practices.

Our approach to hygiene promotion recognises that people do not change their behaviour simply because they are told about health benefits.

People are just as strongly motivated by improvements in privacy, convenience, environmental cleanliness, self-esteem and social status resulting from changes in sanitation and personal and household hygiene.

Significant time and effort are invested in working with communities to identify what motivates people to act in a particular way, how different hygiene behaviours are articulated within everyday life and the positive values that communities already relate to hygiene.

Chief Oturoku Danqwa and his daughter Sarah attend a health education session in Ghana.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Penn

Ideally, planning starts at each project with a thorough exploration of what people already know, do and want in relation to hygiene - not what project staff think the situation might be.

A range of participatory activities are introduced to stimulate discussions about knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices. All of these are designed to build self-esteem and active involvement of community members in decision-making.

These planning activities look at what people want to do to effect behaviour change; working to find positive 'can do' solutions to problems identified by communities rather than negative 'don't do' messages from outsiders.

Safe hygiene practices

We encourage communities to carry out safe hygiene practices which include:

• Taking drinking water from protected sources like handpumps or protected wells, rather than rivers or ponds
• Keeping water pots covered when they are not in use
• Going to the toilet at a safe distance from water sources that are used for drinking, cooking or other household purposes
• Ensuring animals are kept away from houses, water sources and latrines
• Using a sanitary latrine instead of going to the toilet in the bush
• Handwashing with soap and water after going to the toilet and before eating
• Making drainage channels or soakpits to take wastewater away from wells and homes
• Washing fruit and vegetables before cutting, keeping cooked food covered and utensils off the ground

Download the hygiene education issue sheet (PDF 208Kb)