British multinational consumer goods company Reckitt through its Dettol brand has partnered with the Ministry of Education to launch a handwashing campaign targeting 300,000 school-going children.
The campaign seeks to boost hygiene standards and help to contain the spread of coronavirus and other hygiene-related illnesses among school children and members of the public.
The Country Manager, Reckitt East Africa, Mr Asif Hashimi, lauded Dettol’s achievements in rooting for hygiene education.
“We have also provided some schools with handwashing stations and soap; this education is very important as regular hand washing with clean water and soap or the use of sanitizers has been proven to be a good prevention against transmittable diseases such as Covid-19.” Mr Asif said.
The two companies have so far reached over 2 million school children in Kenya with their hygiene education initiative.
According to a 2014 Kenya Demographic Health Survey, Kenya has a 15 percent national prevalence of under 5 years diarrheal diseases.
This comes even as the World Health Organisation ranks diarrhea as the second leading cause of death in children under five years, killing 525, 000 children under 5 years every year.
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In April this year, Reckitt launched its malaria prevention campaign in the country that involved education on malaria prevention & in-store consumer education.
Reckitt’s Country Manager, Sachin Varma noted that Reckitt through its brand, Mortein Doom, remains a key stakeholder in ensuring that the Malaria scourge is controlled through driving public educational initiatives that reinforce the message that Malaria is preventable and treatable.
“Zero malaria is within reach for all Kenyans. The aim is to fight the menace of the malaria-causing mosquitoes by interrupting their life cycles to enhance our preventive strategies,” said Varma.
According to WHO World Malaria Report 2020, the number of confirmed malaria cases in 2020 decreased to 86 per 1,000 population per year from 113 per 1,000 of the population in 2016 with decreased out-patient attendance from 30% to 19% and in-patient admissions from 20% to 15%.
WHO World Malaria Report 2020 continues to state that about 95 percent of malaria deaths were in 32 countries with Kenya accounting for 1 percent of that. Kenya also accounted for 3 percent of all malaria deaths globally in 2019.
About 230 million cases of malaria and more than 400,000 deaths globally are attributed to malaria each year. African children are at the highest risk of dying of malaria which accounted for more than 265,000 deaths of children in Africa in 2019.
