Dettol Nigeria joins FG to promote hand hygiene on handwashing day

Dettol Nigeria has in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Water Resources promoted the role hand hygiene plays in reducing disease transmission particularly at this time of Covid-19 pandemic.

This was the focus of the 2021 Global Handwashing Day, which was organised with the aim of creating awareness around hand hygiene habits, and the importance of regular hand washing with soap.

At this year’s event in Abuja, with the theme ‘Our Future is at Hand – Let’s Move Forward Together,’ Sulaimon Hussein Adamu, minister of Water Resources, represented by the permanent secretary, Didi Walson-Jack said that sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria is very important, thus the need to create awareness.

While commending the stakeholders for their support, Adamu said that hand washing saves lives, reduces the toll of deaths caused by poor hygiene especially for children and admonishes parents to take up responsibilities in hand washing.

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On the role of Dettol, Akbar Ali Shah, general manager, Reckitt Sub-Saharan Africa, assured that Dettol remains committed to ensuring hand washing gets the deserving attention.

“We believe that it is important to inculcate hand hygiene habits in citizens as a simple act of proper hand washing with soap has been proven to reduce risks of diseases, particularly respiratory and intestinal, by 20 percent-25 percent,” he said.

According to him, Dettol understands the importance of good hygiene and sanitation in the lives of Nigerians, and it is one of the reasons the company launched the ‘Dettol Clean Naija Initiative’ in 2019 before the outbreak of pandemic.

“We recently launched a ‘School Hygiene Curriculum,’ which is an interactive and engaging hygiene lesson aimed at children in primary schools in order to create sustainable behavioral change at a young age. The curriculum is currently being deployed in schools in Lagos State, with plans to extend to other states in 2023,” he disclosed.

The Global Handwashing Day is an international advocacy day dedicated to increasing public awareness and understanding the importance of washing hands with soap, as an effective way of preventing diseases.

Reckitt Nigeria, through the Dettol brand, has over the years developed several programmes committed to tackling public health and hygiene issues. These include the School Hygiene Programme, the New Mum’s Programme, and the #DettolHandwashChallenge through which they have educated over millions of Nigerians in the past six years.