Recycled hotel soap, hand-washing lessons save lives among India’s poor
- Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death, killing half a million children every year, especially in developing countries
- An Indian programme is fighting back with hand-washing campaigns and recycling of hotel soap bars
About 115km (71 miles) from Mumbai in western India, in a district council school in Devkhop village, eighth grader Archana Vasant Baswat is proud of her steady attendance. It has helped her focus on studies and score well. Until about a year ago, the 14-year-old frequently suffered from skin infections that caused rashes and itching, and sometimes diarrhoea, causing her to miss school.
“I didn’t know how critical soap is for maintaining hygiene. We never used it at home,” Baswat says. Her parents are uneducated and never introduced their three children to soap, and therefore, Baswat and her two siblings would bathe irregularly, and only with water, whenever it was available. Mud or plain water was used for washing hands after defecation.
Then a workshop from Sundar India, a programme by Sundara Charitable Trust, changed her perception about hygiene.
During a 30-minute session at her school, three young women from Sundar, called “hygiene angels”, role-played the fight between germs and soap, showed the five steps of hand washing and played a video reiterating that soap should be used after eating, touching an infant, using the toilet, playing and travelling.
They left each child with a free bar of recycled soap to use, with a promise to come back for a follow-up session to find out whether they used it regularly and how they felt about it.