Waterborne diseases pose one of the biggest challenges for public health in India. Diarrhoeal diseases are the largest killers of children in India. India has more than 10 million officially reported cases of diarrhoea per annum, but the actual number must be many times higher. Given the rather poor quality of public water supply and sanitation services in India, one of the most cost-effective interventions for improving community health would be promotion of domestic and personal hygiene and management of drinking water quality at home. In this context, the Government of Kerala's proposed programme promoting the need for handwashing with soap at key health moments is a welcome and much needed addition to the overall set of public health priorities.
In the recent past, there has been a growing acceptance of the fact that providing safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are key government social priorities that will help address the waterborne disease problem.
I believe that hygiene education programmes like those on handwashing with soap offer not just large health gains, but instant health gains as well. This is because there is no need for the government to make large time and money investments in creating programme implementation capacity. The public health benefits of this programme will accrue as soon as the poor change their hygiene habits at critical health moments like feeding and cleaning up children, and before taking meals.
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