By CHARLIE DUMAVI
IN the wake of killer diseases and the outbreak of preventable disease the World Vision PNG in partnership with PNG national education is looking at making hand washing a common practice in communities.
World Vision’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) programme coordinators Helen Andrew and her colleague George Kende demonstrated this in St John’s Tokarara primary and elementary school to commemorate the Global Handwashing Day last week. The event took place on 19th October, 2022.
Andrew said the programme was established in 2015 and was re-enforced during the COVID-19 period to help especially students practice healthy habits to avoid contracting the virus. The wash program is currently underway in selected schools in Morobe, National Capital District, Madang, West Sepik and Gulf province.
“Our partners including the education departments saw that hand washing and health and hygiene is very important. We work in six districts for phase one and phase two in only three districts,” Andrew said.
“In phase one we work with 102 schools. For this programme we have software component and hard where component to it. For software component basically we do awareness on health and hygiene and we formed the WaSH club in the schools. For hardware component we donate handwashing facilities to the schools.”
WaSH clubs in schools are made up of class captains who part5icipate in organising activities and programmes in the schools to promote health and hygiene habits.
It was a great turn out by students who took part in the WaSH programme to demonstrate their knowledge of self-hygiene.
Moreover, education department representative Avea Avaroa said the government through department of education have this vision of WasH policy running from 2015 to 2030.
He said the government have the WaSH programme in communities, health centres and in schools.
“We have WaSH events like world water day, World toilet day, World menstruation hygiene day. These are all part and parcel of WasH activities in the education calendar so we try to tell our schools to organize such events in their own class rooms,” Avaroa said.
He said such event could not be possible to roll out in the country without the help of the non-government organisations, partners and donor agencies.
He added that the programme is one of many such important programs that helped PNG to survive in the COVID-19 pandemic period.
The programme ended with presentation of water buckets, garden rakes, sanitary pads, toothpastes and brushes to school and the participating students.
Furthermore, Avaroa shared the same sentiment AS Helen Andrew in thanking the school managements, the students and the partners namely Unicef, PNG Government, PNGAus Partnership and GPE for rolling out the programme in the country.
