Deevena Jemima¹, Neelam Kumari², Nandini Dikshit³ and Surya Kant⁴*

¹Department of Nutrition, Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
²Department of Nutrition, Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
³Junior Resident, Department of Respiratory Medicine, King George’s Medical University, UP, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
⁴Professor and Head, Department of Respiratory Medicine, King George’s Medical University, UP, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

*Corresponding Author: Surya Kant, Professor and Head, Department of Respiratory Medicine, King George’s Medical University, UP, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Received: July 07, 2021; Published: July 30, 2021

Abstract

It is very rightly said that abode of a health mind is always a healthy body. To maintain good health the most basic requirement however is to have a clean and safe environment. In spite of the widespread use of water purifiers and filtration devices majority people do not have access to clean water for drinking, cleaning and washing. School and college going students mostly have improper eating habits and mostly do not practice proper sanitization. Therefore, they are most prone to infections and if we inculcate the habits of properly washing, sanitization and use of clean and safe water in this age group it will lead to the development of healthier youth population. Clean and safe environment is therefore every child’s birth right. Children who follow good hygiene practices have a healthy life and subsequently develop a robust constitution.

WASH stands for universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene which is programme initiated by UNICEF that has a profound socio-economic impact. After the COVID pandemic struck a lot of awareness was propagated regarding the importance of hand hygiene, despite that three billion people worldwide, that includes millions of school-going children, have no access to hand washing facilities with soap water. The most vulnerable and affected are those living in rural areas, urban slums, disaster-prone areas and belonging to low socio income countries. This awareness is of utmost importance in COVID era since COVID infection spreads in three different ways, by contaminated person, by contaminated air and by contaminated objects. To curtail the spread of infection spread by contaminated objects it is very essential to practice proper sanitization and hand hygiene. Water, sanitation and hygiene practices play an important role in the prevention and transmission of many communicable diseases. In the wake of COVID-19 it is important that these practices be maintained along with proper food safety and sanitation procedures to prevent the spread of illness.

Water is the main cause of various communicable diseases. There are 4 types of water related diseases namely, water borne, water washed, water based and water related vector borne. Water related diseases are those diseases that spread by contaminated water like typhoid, water watershed diseases are those diseases that are spread by not following proper sanitization and hygiene like worm infestation, water based diseases are those that propagate by pathogens based in water like schistosomiasis whereas vector borne diseases like dengue are cultivated near dirty and unsterile water bodies. By following proper methods of sanitisation and keeping self as well as the surroundings clean a good number of these diseases can be nipped in the bud. Provision of clean water for drinking and bathing will not solely prevent infection if proper sanitization techniques are not followed. Therefore, importance of washing and staying clean is of utmost importance for a healthy living. Hygiene and sanitation is specifically important for girls because they are highly susceptible to catch infections such as urinary tract infection and other genital infections. If women follow proper hygiene and they are provided safe access to clean water infections and death amongst infants and mothers will come down by one fourth of their actual number. Females who are mostly involved in cleaning and sanitization of their houses should specifically be made more aware of these practices in order to have a healthy family life. Therefore, this study in young college going females is a means to gauge the quality of basic awareness of hygiene practices in the community.

Keywords: WASH; Food Safety; Hygiene and Sanitation

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Citation

Citation: Surya Kant., et al. “Assessing the Knowledge and Practice of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (Wash) among Female College Students”. Acta Scientific Gastrointestinal Disorders 4.8 (2021): 79-87.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Surya Kant., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.