SUBEB partners firm on school hygiene

Dettol Nigeria has announced plans to commence its Dettol School Hygiene Education programme, an SDG Six initiative under the Dettol Clean Naija campaign to create awareness, educate and encourage primary school pupils to inculcate hygienic practices in their daily lives.

This announcement was made during the Dettol School Hygiene stakeholders’ workshop in Lagos recently which featured the programme’s vision and implementation plan.

In his goodwill message, the Chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Wahab Alawiye-King said good hygiene was part of the government’s programmes to keep pupils safe in school.

“That is part of the safe learning environment initiative of Mr. Governor – to ensure that we enlighten and educate our pupils on the reason why they must know about hygiene, particularly school hygiene. We all know what COVID-19 has done across the world and we must continue to tell them to abide by all the safety protocols as laid down by all the national and local agencies,” he said.

This year, the programme would feature the deployment of a specially developed Hygiene Curriculum created by the Dettol International team, consisting of comics and worksheets that aim to convey the hygiene message to pupils in a fun and engaging manner; the introduction of the Programme Impact assessment, which will see Dettol use scientific measurement tools to determine the impact of its hygiene education on the pupils, their teachers and parents; and, in line with Sustainable Developmental Goal 17, partnerships for the goals, Dettol has partnered with the Lagos State office on SDGs, Dean Initiative, World’s Largest Lesson and Slum and Rural Health Initiative (SRHIN) to help drive the programme implementation and adoption.

General Manager, Reckitt Sub-Saharan Africa, Mr Akbar Ali Shah said this year the programme was expanded because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the past six years, we have directly reached over five million primary school children in Nigeria with our hygiene education.  However, with the need for an intensified hygiene consciousness due to COVID-19, we are evolving from a model where we had just a one-off contact with the students, to one where there will be repeated interactions based on lessons from the Hygiene Curriculum. Our aim is to emphasize the need to enable a sanitized environment and to create the importance of water, hygiene and sanitation in preventing the spread of infection amongst children,” he said.

In his speech, the Senior Special Assistant on SDGs to the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Lekan Fatodu, said children were more vulnerable to hospitalization for infections so would benefit from the hygiene programme.

“Statistics has shown that half of all general practitioner consultations and 12 per cent of all hospitalizations among children aged 0-14 years are from infections. Hence, I am enthusiastic to see the huge benefits the knowledge shared here today will have on the physical well-being of our pupils”.

The Dettol Clean Naija Initiative was created by Dettol Nigeria as an integrated multi-level campaign aimed at creating awareness, education and driving hygiene behavioral change to achieve a cleaner and healthier Nigeria.

Samson Unamka

Nation Newspaper

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