It’s one of the most cost effective public health interventions and it could prevent disease, death and also improve education outcomes, but the challenge for hand-washing is convincing people to actually do it. Unilever, a powerful global brand, is working both through its business and with partners to leverage the company’s skills to help tackle the issue, both because it will grow markets but also because there’s a clear moral case for doing so.
Water, sanitation and hygiene issues also impact other challenges including nutrition and education — clean water and improved sanitation can help reduce the hundreds of millions of days children miss of school due to diarrhea.
But often interventions in the WASH space have focused on improving infrastructure. India, for example, built many toilets, but without proper upkeep and education many sit unused and in disrepair.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
