Help with Food
We teach simple effective health care and provide advanced health care to each child as needed.
People around the world wash their hands with water (when they can get it and it is not always clean water) but very few wash their hands with soap at the critical moments (while cleaning a child, before handling food, after using the toilet). Most neglect using soap out of ignorance and/or believing it must be conserved for laundry and dishes. Handwashing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrheal diseases and pneumonia but sadly it is seldom practiced and is often difficult to promote. If washing hands with soap before eating and after using the toilet could become an ingrained habit it could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention. It could reduce deaths from diarrhea by almost one-half 3and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter 4
You may be asking yourself why using soap is so very important. Using soap takes longer, adding to the time spent washing. Just as when we use grease-cutting detergent for our dishes we use soap to break down the grease that contains the microscopic germs. It is recommended that friction is applied for 20 seconds. That means rubbing hands together in a handwashing motion while singing Happy Birthday two times through. The actual rubbing motion dislodges the germs and when rinsed they are carried off. Washing also leaves the hands smelling nice. The kind of soap is not important. They all work equally well when they are used properly.
