Global Handwashing Day - Importance of The Movement

Importance of The Movement

Hand washing with soap is the single most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrhea and acute respiratory infections (ARI), as automatic behavior performed in homes, schools, and communities worldwide. Pneumonia, a major ARI, is the number one cause of mortality among children under five years old, taking the life of an estimated 1.8 million children per year. Diarrhea and pneumonia together account for almost 3.5 million child deaths annually. According to the official site, turning hand washing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit was projected to save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.

Read more about this topic:  Global Handwashing Day

Famous quotes containing the words importance of, importance and/or movement:

    We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.
    Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)

    The moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    Suppose these houses are composed of ourselves,
    So that they become an impalpable town, full of
    Impalpable bells, transparencies of sound,
    Sounding in the transparent dwellings of the self,
    Impalpable habitations that seem to move
    In the movement of the colors of the mind....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)