ABOUT 1,400 elementary students of Maximo Estrella Elementary School in Barangay Sta. Cruz, Makati City kicked-off Thursday the Second Global Handwashing Day.

They aim to collecting more than one million handprints from children nationwide signifying their commitment to continue the habit, as well as teaching their fellow classmates to start the habit.

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“Young children are often the most vulnerable to the risks posed by poor hygiene as they put their hands in their mouths and are easily infected with bacteria and worms, which deplete the body’s nutrients,” said United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) country representative Vanessa Tobin.

Thursday’s event, attended by officials from the Department of Education (DepEd), the community, and parents, was aimed at educating schoolchildren of the importance of hand washing, being the simplest form of disease prevention.

“Yet the simple habit of washing their hands with soap and water at key moments in the day can prevent them from getting sick with potentially deadly disease such as diarrhea and pneumonia,” said Tobin.

“By washing their hands with soap and water, they remove bacteria and viruses, preventing infection. Hand washing with soap also interrupts the transmission of disease by stopping dirt, bacteria and viruses from getting onto food or into the mouth,” she added.

This year’s Global Handwashing Day, carrying the theme “Clean Hands Save Lives” also emphasizes the importance of using soap in hand washing as it helps break down disease-causing bacteria.

Last year’s handwashing education program was able to teach proper handwashing techniques to some 800,000 schoolchildren nationwide.

This year’s goal is to educate three million children on the habit of handwashing.

Unicef data showed that every year, 3.5 million children under five years die of pneumonia and diarrhea all over the world. In the Philippines, 10,000 children die of diarrhea, making it the 4th leading cause of deaths among children under five years of age.

Diarrhea is the fourth leading cause of deaths among children less than five years and the third leading cause of child illness.

Aside from diarrhea, 10 percent of children below five years had symptoms of Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) or about one million new cases in children while 70 percent of pre-school children are host to at least one type of intestinal helminthes and seven out of 10 children (aged 3-12) suffer from intestinal worms.

Tobin said between 10 and 20 percent of about 1.5 million of children under five have diarrhea at any one time with the highest cases (20 percent) reported in the Cordillera region followed by the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Central Visayas.

The official said handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhea incidence by as much as 44 percent and acute respiratory infection by 25 percent.

“Handwashing with soap and water is the simplest, most cost-effective way of improving sanitation and hygiene. A $3.35 investment in handwashing brings the same health benefits as an $11 investment in latrine construction, a $200 investment in household water supply and an investment of thousand of dollars in immunization.”

The DepEd has joined forces with Unicef and Procter & Gamble (P&G) Philippines to collect one million handprints from schoolchildren all over the country and at the same time educating them the valuable benefits of hand washing.

This is also in accordance with the education agency’s Essential Health Care Program (EHCP) that they have been firmly pushing since the wake of the Influenza AH1N1virus.

EHCP is a school-based program of DepEd and allocates simple and doable activities like daily hand washing, tooth brushing, bi-annual de-worming, among others.

The program aims at improving students’ health thus also improving their academic performance.

The EHCP also aims to reduce diarrhea incidence by 30-40 percent, reduce respiratory infections by 20-30 percent, reduce worm infections by 50 percent, reduce dental caries by 40-50 percent, and reduce infection in the mouth by 50 percent.

The DepEd hopes that with the EHCP in place, school attendance would improve by 20 percent and so is academic performance.

Last year, a DepEd study showed that health problems are among the leading causes of poor learning outcomes and dropouts among students.

Common aliments found among Grade 1 to 3 pupils included dental carries (82 percent), pediculosis (17 percent), malnutrition (14 percent), impacted cerumen (six percent) and iron deficiency anemia (seven percent).

But efforts to address the problem were hampered by the lack of adequate funding and medical personnel to attend to the millions of schoolchildren nationwide.

Current Deped statistics showed that there is one nurse for every 5,537 students and one doctor for every 120,936 students. The dentist to student ratio is at 1:18,000. (AH/Sunnex)