Royal recognition for ‘Queen of Hygiene’, Professor Valerie Curtis

on
19 November 2020
Picture of Professor Val Curtis

WaterAid’s President’s Award posthumously awarded to behavioural scientist who devoted her life to championing hygiene and sanitation.

Professor Val Curtis – who passed away last month at the age of 62 – has been posthumously awarded WaterAid’s President’s Award. The award is the highest honour the international charity can give, and is acknowledged and signed by its President, HRH The Prince of Wales.

Val was the Director of the Environmental Health Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and was known as ‘The Queen of Hygiene’ by friends, fans and colleagues.  

Over an incredible career of more than 30 years, Val led research that put hygiene behaviour change including handwashing on the political agenda across the world, and advocated that decent toilets be made normal for everyone, everywhere. As part of this ceaseless quest to bring sanitation, hygiene and knowledge of how to maximise their protective powers to every corner of the world, Val became the only person ever to give a speech at the United Nations featuring a plastic poo.
 
Val co-developed an approach known as Behaviour Centred Design to create and test interventions in hygiene, sanitation and other behaviour-related issues, which has informed robust behaviour change programmes in many low- and middle-income countries, as well as the response to COVID-19 globally. These programmes have in turn helped save thousands if not millions of lives. 

WaterAid colleagues worked closely with Professor Curtis to fight for hygiene; establishing the Sanitation Hygiene Action Research for Equity (SHARE) consortium; publishing joined papers and initiating numerous think tank events. The charity also collaborated with Val on behaviour-centred approaches to which have been implemented within hygiene programmes across the majority of the 28 countries which WaterAid works in. 

Tim Wainwright, Chief Executive, WaterAid, said:

“There is no question that Val deserved to receive WaterAid’s highest accolade. She devoted her career, her life really, to our shared purpose;  reaching everyone, everywhere with good hygiene and decent toilets.

“Her death is not only a personal loss to many at WaterAid who have worked closely with her, but a huge loss to the water, sanitation, hygiene and health sectors. She truly changed thousands – if not millions – of lives.”

ENDS 

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Notes to Editors:

WaterAid

WaterAid is working to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation. The international not-for-profit organisation works in 28 countries to change the lives of the poorest and most marginalised people. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 26.4 million people with clean water and 26.3 million people with decent toilets. For more information, visit www.wateraid.org/uk, follow @WaterAid or @WaterAidPress on Twitter, or find WaterAid UK on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wateraid.

  • 785 million people in the world – one in ten – do not have clean water close to home.[1]
  • 2 billion people in the world – almost one in four – do not have a decent toilet of their own.[2]
  • Around 310,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's almost 800 children a day, or one child every two minutes.[3]
  • Every £1 invested in water and toilets returns an average of £4 in increased productivity.[4]
  • Just £15 can provide one person with clean water.[5]

[1] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene: 2017 update and SDG Baselines

[2] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene: 2017 update and SDG Baselines

[3] Prüss-Ustün et al. (2014) and The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2018)

[4] World Health organization (2012) Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage

[5] www.wateraid.org

 

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