Health in Your Hands

The Government of Kerala is considering implementing an innovative program entitled “Health in Your Hands”, with the primary objective of reducing the incidence of diarrhoeal disease on the poor.  This vision of an effective statewide hygiene promotion program seeks to replicate and build on Kerala’s previous success in achieving universal literacy and child immunization.
Past and current initiatives of the Kerala Government have led to a relatively high coverage of sanitation, and piped water supply.  However, significant investment in hygiene and hand washing education has hitherto not been made-and this has limited the full potential of the health gains that come from investment in water supply and sanitation.  A major thrust of the hand washing with soap initiative is therefore to build synergy with existing water supply and sanitation programs.  In addition, Kerala’s high female literacy, well-educated front-line workers, highly effective local panchayat governance, and high social and community consciousness, significantly improve e the prospectus of rapid health gains from this program.
There is widespread consensus among Indian and global health experts that an hand washing with soap intervention can reduce diarrhoeal disease by over 40% o.  This intervention can therefore be effectively used to tackle the incidence of diarrhoea in Kerala, which, in nay two-week period, affects 12% of children under the age of 3.
The salient features of the proposed program, which has been included in the state plan for financial year 2003-2004, are;

• Government of Kerala led program supported by Unicef, the World Bank, The Water and sanitation Program and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
• The generic hygiene promotion campaign will have a direct contact program in select districts, managed by the panchayats and will be supported by a state-wide mass media campaign
• Leading experts from the private sector (large And small), who have a proven track record of enabling behavior change, will provide technical assistance to the government in designing this non-branded campaign government will knot procure soap from any soap manufacturer.
• Rs.10 crores program to be supported by external agencies.
• Program cost of Rs 3 per person compares very favorably with the Rs 50-75 cost of diarrhoeal treatment that a poor family would typically incur on medicines or doctor fees.
• Substantially increase the incidence of hand washing at critical health moments (feeding, child, cleaning child etc) from the present level of 16%.