London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A new campaign aimed at promoting handwashing with soap as a means of preventing child deaths has launched in Ghana.

The Ghana National Programme is the first of a series of initiatives which form part of the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing, which has been set up by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UNICEF, the World Bank, national and local government partners in Ghana and a number of international and national soap companies including Unilever, PZ Cussons and Getrade. Other countries soon to take up the campaign include Peru, Senegal, Nepal, Madagascar and Indonesia.

But this campaign is different in that it is abandoning the traditional 'health education' approach, which has been tried, without success in the past, in favour of a commercial, marketing-led approach. The organisers believe that by tapping into the huge marketing skills and reach of the soap manufacturing companies - the world's biggest advertisers - they have a far greater chance of getting their key messages across to the target audiences -mothers and caregivers of children under five, and schoolchildren.

Handwashing with soap has been shown to halve rates of diarrhoea, which kills two million children a year in the developing world*, and there is also evidence that it can significantly reduce rates of acute respiratory illness, an even bigger child killer. But, despite being major consumers of soap, only 24% of people in Ghana use it to wash their hands after using the toilet, and just 16% do so after changing a child's nappy. The aim of the campaign is to increase these rates to 48% and 32% respectively over a two-year period.

Billboards featuring images of handwashing and attractive, clean-looking families have gone up all over Ghana, while a series of TV and radio advertisements stressing the 'yuk' factor of dirty hands are being transmitted, with a frequency similar to that of a major product launch, and a catchy theme tune to match.

The effectiveness of the first phase of the campaign will be evaluated early next year, and there will be a consumer research exercise to determine how the campaign should be taken forward.

Ends.

*Curtis and Cairncross, Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2003