Hygiene promotion: lessons from Save the Children's Bangladesh programme

Updated - Friday 29 May 2009

Save the Children’s School Health and Nutrition (SHN) programme (2002-2008) in Nasirnagar, Bangladesh, provided water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities and promoted handwashing in 127 schools, reaching over 33,500 children. The programme also helped to improve access to and use of household water and sanitation facilities.

Despite these achievements, the programme encountered a number of challenges [1,2]:

13 percent of households continue to practice open defecation due to lack of funds for a latrine, lack of space for construction, or lack of knowledge;
hand-washing habits were more difficult to change at the household-level than at the school-level;
57 percent of households still do not properly dispose of their waste, due to a lack of facilities away from households and the belief that children’s faeces is less harmful than that of adults;
handwashing facilities were sometimes vandalised and replacement parts and repairs are costly and rely on external support;
as there was not always enough time to provide school health and hygiene promotion lessons, Save the Children recommends adding a weekly health class to the national curriculum;
the success of health and hygiene promotion depended largely on the participation of school management committees; and
mothers’ gatherings and courtyard meetings needed to be held at convenient times in women’s daily schedules—usually between breakfast and lunch, and have the support of husbands and family members.

[1] Save the Children (2009). Improving water and sanitation in schools and communities : successes and lessons learned from Nasirnagar, Bangladesh. 6 p. Download here

[2] Save the Children (2009). Changing hygiene behavior in schools and communities : successes and lessons learned from Nasirnagar, Bangladesh. 5 p. Download here

Contact: Save the Children, Ikhtiar Uddin, ikhtiar@savechildren.org or Natalie Roschnik, nroschnik@savechildren.org

Web sites: Save the Children ; Schools & Health ; WASH in Schools