MEC Madoda Sambatha encourages the community to continue with maintaining good hand hygiene as the province mark World Hand Hygiene Day
Every year on the 5 May, the world observes World Hand Hygiene Day. This is to increase awareness and remind people on the importance of handwashing with soap and water as an effective way to prevent diseases.
Handwashing can prevent about 30% of diarrhea-related sicknesses and about 20% of respiratory infections.
“This day creates an opportunity to design, test and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands constantly especially now that we are grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. We all know that our province is one of those provinces that struggle with access to clean drinking water, however we urge our people to continue practicing good hand hygiene and keep the disease and infections away responsibly” said MEC Madoda Sambatha
You can protect yourself and those around you from getting sick by washing your hands every time after sneezing or coughing, when caring for the sick, before and after treating a cut or wound, before, during and after preparing food, after toilet use, after handling animals or animal waste.
The minimum time to scrub your hands is 20 seconds then rinse them well under clean running water for infection prevention and control.
“With the advent of COVID-19 which made a lot of us more cautious on how infections can easily be spread, most people now are able to practice hand hygiene either by washing hands frequently or using sanitizers to control and prevent the spread of numerous diseases that hands can hold, which at least improved the hand hygiene on a lot of people and motivated them to make clean hands part of their daily lives” added Sambatha
Media enquiries:
Tebogo Lekgethwane,
Departmental Spokesperson
Cell: 067 422 7763
E-mail: tlekgethwane@nwpg.gov.za
