Tanzania: Unicef, Govt launch national hygiene campaign

A national campaign to improve hygiene and sanitation in Tanzania was launched in Dar es Salaam on 3 November 2009. During the campaign people are required to send photographs of the kind of toilets available or being used in the community, old toilets, filthy ones and the cleanest or new toilets.

It is the brainchild of Unicef and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The national toilet campaign is known as Fyatua choo ushinde (Kiswahili words literally meaning “Click a toilet and win”).

Unicef representative, Dr Abdulai Tinograh, said it is designed to mobilise all Tanzanians to participate in a robust national campaign to improve hygiene and sanitation in the society.

”We have discovered that 90 per cent of children in these districts and probably in most areas of Tanzania use toilets, but do not have anywhere to wash their hands. Hence, they go back to classrooms with dirty hands which may make them sick,” he said.

The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Ms Blandina Nyoni said that the Government clearly recognizes the importance of hygiene and sanitation and has set priority targets in the National Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction to include 95 per cent of the population with access to basic sanitation by 2010.

Related news:

• Tanzania: Ministry pledges increase of budget for rural water programme, Source Weekly, 19 Oct 2009
• Mozambique: “model institutions” in hygiene campaign, Source Weekly, 06 Feb 2009

Related web sites:

• IRC - Hygiene Promotion
• Hygiene Central
• Sanitation, Hygiene and Wastewater Resource Guide - Hygiene and Sanitation Promotion

Contact:

• Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Tanzania, ps@moh.go.tz
• UNICEF, Tanzania, contact page

Source: Beldina Nyakeke, The Citizen, 04 Nov 2009.

Keywords

• Africa
• Sanitation - Hygiene promotion
• Sanitation - School sanitation