Good clean fun with the Little Doctors

Continuing Field base's health and hygiene awareness project with the local secondary in Jayapura, myself, Anna, Dr Josse and Polly B went along to the school on Thursday to test the whole school on the seven steps on handwashing.

Armed with bars of soap as reward for every pupil who successfully displayed their handwashing knowledge we arrived at the school to the usual intrigue and excitement from the school kids.

After a quick refresher course with our 'Mini Medics', they were split into three teams to test the rest of the school.

The seven steps of handwashing:




Wet hands

Apply soap and lather

Step one: palm to palm
Step two: between fingers

Step three: base of thumbs

Step four: fingernails

Step five: back of hands

Step six: centre palm



Step seven: wrists

It was slight pandamoniom as the pupils descended on us keen to show off their hygenie skills and claim their bar of soap.



Even though it was all good clean fun we hope the serious message has also been got across. Simply by handwashing with soap – especially before preparing food and after using the toilet – is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diahrroeal diseases which cause thousands of avoidable deaths in India every year.

All text by Polly Carpenter and photos by Polly Baldwin http://www.dynamicpictures.co.uk/ (unless stated otherwise).