Hygiene all over the world

Rosella Baldelli - 01.03.2017 13:14

Let's discuss about the problems and the possible solutions in the future!

Water, the way to hygiene

by Giulia Violini, LSP Assisi/Italy

Hygiene is one of the fundamental factors for the prevention of infections and having a good health, but what is hygiene? It means the conditions and practices that help to maintain one’s health and to prevent the spreading of illnesses both on a personal and on a common level.

Personal hygiene is based on simple rules like brushing teeth, having a shower, changing into clean clothes, and washing hands before preparing or eating food as these are easy bearers of germs.

These actions can seem obvious to those who, living in developed countries, have good hygienic conditions but for the people who live in poor or developing countries these things are not always obvious or simple.

At the base of a good hygienic standard there is the use of clean water, which is easy to find in developed countries but not in the developing ones. The waste of water we are witness of every day makes us forget how important this primary need is.

To get drinking water there are people who must walk for hours in dangerous places without being sure how safe and healthy that water will be.

Due to this shortage, the health and the hygiene of these people, especially children, are seriously affected. According to the UNICEF website, around 700,000 children die of diarrhoea every year (2,000 children every day), because of contaminated water and scarce hygiene. In addition to diarrhoea, illnesses caused by dirty water are various: meningitis, sepsis, pneumonia or cholera, but the most important danger is the bacterium of the salmonella that causes typhus.

This makes us understand how important and necessary it is to make clean water accessible to the poorest countries of the world. Associations like Action Aid or Charity Water are doing all they can to bring drinkable water to these populations, organizing distance adoptions or donations through which it is possible to build wells. But building wells is not enough if in those villages people will not be able to use or repair them. In these cases, the work of volunteers becomes fundamental.

At this point, despite the situation improving, the hope is that we all become aware of how important water is for the global

development and how much it can do to raise the living standards in the poorest countries.

I have written this article after reading a document of the Johns Hopkins Water Institute on the issues of water and hygiene. The problem is really serious and it needs to be solved as soon as possible. That is why I think that those who have skills, ideas and the possibility to go to these areas of the world and help must to do it.

Picture taken from Pixabay; Posted 04.03.2017 12:40

Mikaela Fors - 27.03.2017 14:33

Dieser Artikel behandelt ein sehr interessantes Thema. Es ist schwierig für uns zu verstehen, dass nicht alle sauberes Wasser haben. Es sollte selbstverständlich sein. Hier in Schweden haben wir viele Fonds, die Geld für sauberes Wasser in anderen Ländern sammeln. Das ist sehr wichtig und ich glaube, dass es eine Lösung für die hygienischen Probleme in der ganzen Welt sein könnte, weil alle die Möglichkeit haben sollten, mit sauberem Wasser zu kochen und sich zu waschen.

Sebastian Holm - 31.03.2017 13:45

We think that it's an interesting article because it explains how important hygiene is. It is a shame that thousands of people die every year because of bad hygiene and we agree with the fact that the people in the developed countries should try to do something about it. We, who have clean water, should be grateful because that is not something which you can take for granted.