The practice of hand-washing with soap in Viet Nam’s rural areas is not common, a conference heard last week. According to a national survey [1] conducted by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and other partners, 12 per cent of rural people wash their hands with soap before meals and only 16 per cent do so after excreting.

Only 4.6 per cent of rural students wash their hands with soap after urinating and 11.5 per cent after defecation. Although 35.5 per cent of surveyed schools have hand-washing areas with sufficient water, only 4.6 per cent of the facilities have soap. In addition to people’s poor awareness of appropriate hygiene, Viet Nam’s rural areas also cope with problems related to the dearth of hygienic latrines and clean water, the survey emphasized.

[1] Viet Nam Administration of Preventive Medicine and UNICEF (2007). A summary of national baseline survey on the environmental sanitation and hygiene situation in Viet Nam. Download here

Related news: Viet Nam: Handwashing communications campaign set, Source Weekly, 01 Jun 2007 ; Hygiene: handwashing reduces diarrhoea by 30 per cent, Source Weekly, 29 Feb 2008

Related web site: Health in Your Hands

Sources: Thanhnien News, 4 Apr 2008

Tags: hygiene promotion, sanitation, school sanitation