Hyderabad|India|October'2010: Handwashing with soap before eating can save lives, make that your new mantra this Global Handwashing Day and everyday! Every year over 3.5 million children, aged below five years, succumb to diarrhoea and pneumonia. And one of out every five victims is an Indian child! What few know is that scrubbing hands regularly with water and soap can prevent us from contracting a number of respiratory and diarrheal diseases.

On the occasion of Global Handwashing day Lifebuoy plans to get 1 crore children in the state of Andhra Pradesh to pledge towards washing hands with soap some time this month to observe Global Handwashing Day 2010. On October 15 Global Handwashing Day, the Indian Public Health Association join hands with Lifebuoy with an ambitious goal of spreading the hand hygiene message – to pledge to wash their hands with soap before eating – and to spread the word of the importance of this to friends, family, and fellow colleagues who are not practicing this healthy habit. said Dr. Chandrakant S. Pandav is the National President of Indian Public Health Association (IPHA. This campaign is taken up public interest by Lifebuoy.

Imagine this: every day children pick up scores of germs when they travel to school by bus, play in the mud or handle books. Each time they pop a chocolate or bite into a biscuit held with unwashed hands, they consume numerous bacteria, making it a sure-shot recipe for illness. The common cold and the flu are also spread through hand-to-hand contact, a reason why school going children often catch the bug from friends. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that the human influenza virus can survive on surfaces for up to eight hours, making people susceptible to catching it each time they touch the infected object.

With a large population having limited access to health care facilities or even proper sanitation, the problem becomes more acute. A simple solution is following the water-and-soap ritual before eating. Handwashing with soap at can cut diarrhoea-related deaths by almost half (44%) and acute respiratory infections by one quarter (23%)

Handwashing with soap can also reduce skin infections, eye infections, intestinal worms, swine flu, pandemic flu, SARS, avian flu, trachoma, parasitic worm infections, neonatal mortality, school absenteeism, sickness in AIDS patients and chronic malnutrition. Also, handwashing with soap is one of the most cost effective public health interventions to prevent diarrheal related diseases and death.