Cultivate handwashing, school children told
The La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Coordinator, Madam Comfort Donkor, has encouraged schoolchildren to cultivate handwashing as a habit.
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Speaking to over 200 Zoomkids Club members during the Global Handwashing Day (GHD) commemoration last Saturday, the SHEP Coordinator advised them to make handwashing part of their lives.
“This will help cut down drastically on your parents’ expenditure on health care. Proper handwashing is among the most effective and inexpensive ways of preventing diseases, which are responsible for the majority of child deaths,” she told the schoolchildren.
Importance of handwashing
The Deputy Director in charge of Monitoring and Supervision at the La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Education Directorate, Madam Gifty Boateng, who represented the Municipal Director of Education, took the schoolchildren through the importance of handwashing.
The programme, which was sponsored by the Zoomlion Foundation, brought together Zoomkids members from various schools such as Kweiman M/A JHS, Danfa Methodist JHS, Otinibi Basic School, Danfa Primary School, among other educational institutions.
In a speech read on her behalf, the National Coordinator for Zoomlion Foundation, Mrs Sarah Kyei, stressed the importance of health education in disease prevention and encouraged the schoolchildren to practice what they had been taught and share the knowledge with their peers and siblings.
“The vision of the foundation is to promote widespread awareness of the importance of proper handwashing,” Mrs Kyei stated.
She said the Zoomlion Foundation was sponsoring two celebrations of GHD 2016 simultaneously, one in Nadowli in the Upper West Region and the other in the Madina Municipality in Accra.
Nadowli-Kaleo GHD
Meanwhile, in Nadowli in the upper West region region, the event was marked at the market square but was extended to three other communities: Kalsegra, Yiziiri and Kpazie, where chiefs, elders, queenmothers and opinion leaders gathered for the occasion.
The atmosphere was charged with melodies from the xylophone amid dancing to welcome the District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr John Boscos Bomansaan, and the participants from Nadowli to the three communities.
The Zoomkids Club also did some poetry recitals on environmental sanitation in English and Dagaari, danced to music and demonstrated how to effectively wash hands.
Solidarity messages were delivered by representatives of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), UNICEF, the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD), Zoomlion Company Limited among other institutions.
From a locally designed device containing clean water and soap, the DCE of Nadowli took the lead to demonstrate how to effectively wash hands, followed by a Zoomkids member.