Yes, Hanna, both the writeups are interesting and informative. Thank you.
Do you have handwashing data for Pakistan?

F H Mughal

Hi Elisabeth,

Global Handwashing Day was founded by the PPPHW. The information that I provided here was from speaking with Sarah Fry (with WASHplus) who was involved in establishing the day. That said, I don't have a source online that you could use as a source for the Wikipedia page.

The PPPHW is independent of the WAShplus project and will continue after the conclusion of WASHplus next year.

Best,

Hanna

Thanks for your question! As I am sure you know, measuring handwashing behavior can be very difficult. A new article in article in Waterlines explores this very question. One of the co-authors of this article, Libbet Loughnan wrote a good blog on the topic, too.

Hope this helps!

Dear Hanna,

Could you kindly fill us on the progress of handwashing - whether it has increased over the years in poor developing countries.

How do you monitor progress on handwashing?

Thank you,
Regards,
F H Mughal

Dear Hanna,

Thanks for your fast response! When I read the question of Amitangshu, I thought to myself, let's see if the Wikipedia page on Global Handwashing Day explains it - but it doesn't! Time to change that...

Therefore, is there a reference that I can use for your statement?:

The founders of Global Handwashing Day tried to take the standard academic calendar into account, and looked at dates of other global advocacy days to ensure there wasn't overlap. They also thought that picking a date with a "5" would be good for five fingers.

Even if it's just a website, that would be better than nothing (I am not supposed to cite forum posts)?

Also: who were "the founders" exactly? And I didn't understand what you meant about the "standard academic calendar"? Do you mean in the US where the academic university year starts in October? How would that relate to picking the best date?

The 5 for the five fingers is good, although 10 October would have been better then as we have 10 fingers.

Currently on Wikipedia it explains (actually, I just improved the wording) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Handwashing_Day#History):

History

Global Handwashing Day was initiated by the Public Private Partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW) in August 2008 at the annual World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.[15] This means that the first Global Handwashing Day took place on 15 October 2008. The date was appointed by the UN General Assembly. The year 2008 was also the International Year of Sanitation.[16]

Perhaps we could make it clearer who was championing it at the time, maybe we should even mention some key people's names?

I just checked out the history page of PPPHW, very interesting: globalhandwashing.org/about-us/our-history/

Did I deduct correctly that most of its funding comes from USAID?
Is your funding arrangement explained somewhere on the website? Oh wait, now I found this (globalhandwashing.org/about-us/who-we-are/):

USAID supports the PPPHW through the WASHplus Project. WASHplus is a five-year (2010–2015) cooperative agreement implemented by FHI 360 with CARE and Winrock International as core partners, and is funded through USAID’s Bureau for Global Health.

Does that mean you have a problem with the WASHplus Project finishes at the end of this year?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Thanks Hanna, I was always curious about why 15th October

Cheers

Amitangshu

Hi Amitangshu,

The founders of Global Handwashing Day tried to take the standard academic calendar into account, and looked at dates of other global advocacy days to ensure there wasn't overlap. They also thought that picking a date with a "5" would be good for five fingers.

Hope that helps!

Dear All,

Can anyone tell me why the date for Global Handwashing Day is fixed on 15th October? Is there any reason for that specific date?

Cheers

Amitangshu

This post comes a little late but I thought I would share the outputs of an event that was held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the 14th October to mark Global Handwashing Day. The event was organised through a collaboration between WaterAid, LSHTM and the SHARE Consortium.

The event aimed to bring together global experts in handwashing to present the latest body of evidence around handwashing, behaviour change programs and effective monitoring. Importantly the event also sought to highlight research gaps and opportunities in an age of new emerging public health concerns (such as antibiotic resistance and emerging zoonotic diseases).

You can read a full description of the event on our website , where you can also download all the slides from the presentations. You can also watch a video recording of the event here .

So, Global Handwashing Day 2015 has been and gone. I hope people involved in advertising for it feel that it has been a success? Feedback anyone?

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned about the Wikipedia page about Global Handwashing Day and that it would be good to have it in good shape.

Just to re-iterate my point, here you find the click statistics for this page. You can clearly see that on on Global Handwashing Day on 15 October, many many more people than normal looked up this information on Wikipedia! The page received nearly 9000 hits on that day. On normal days it gets around 200-300 hits (only).

See graph taken from stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Global_Handwashing_Day:



The Wikipedia page itself you can see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Handwashing_Day

The same observation can be made for the page on handwashing although there it is not as pronounced (stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Hand_washing).

My conclusions:

1. It's good that we upgraded the quality of that page prior to this UN Day.
2. The UN Day led many additional people look up this page on 15 October. This might have been journalists, politicians or just the general public.
3. Let's improve the page on World Toilet Day in time for 19 November to make sure that people see all the right things when they click on it (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Toilet_Day)!! Robyn Waite has already been busy with it, see here on the talk page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_Toilet_Day

Regards,
Elisabeth

Tim Kellow, Concern Universal: "I’ve always been a sceptic when it comes to world “Days”. However noble the cause, what difference can they really make? The International Day of Peace – as if the various factions in Syria or Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists paused from their daily destruction to consider alternative approaches. How many acres of forest are cleared for extracting resources or planting cash-crops every World Environment Day? Aside from providing a hook for advocacy press releases, how could those involved possibly think that one day could positively affect the suffering on the front lines of poverty and insecurity? Well, having run behaviour change projects in West Africa over the last five years I am beginning to believe that it can."

Read the full article on The Guardian's website

Article title:
Not just another day
Global Handwashing Day is there to remind us of how simple the solutions to serious issues can be

.

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