Nigeria’s leading hygiene brand Dettol, through its flagship Clean Naija Initiative, a campaign designed to create awareness, educate and drive behavioural change to achieve a cleaner and healthier Nigeria has partnered with the Lagos State Government through the Office of Sustainable Development Goals and Investment, on a campaign to educate primary school children within the State on how to stay protected from infectious diseases, such as the Coronavirus and Lassa Fever.
According to the WHO, “Good hygiene is an important barrier to many infectious diseases, and it promotes better health and well-being”. This has driven Dettol’s commitment to spreading the message of good hygiene practices among Nigerians, and has given birth to various initiatives, programmes and social investment activities across the country.
Recently, the hygiene education team were at St Mary’s Convent school Lagos Island, Lagos, and over 500 school pupils were taught on how to prevent the transmission of respiratory illnesses, and proper hand hygiene.
Speaking at the session, The General Manager, RB West Africa, Mr. Dayanand Sriram, stated, “Our health is in our hands. Hand washing a few times during the day prevents a lot of illnesses. In light of the panic around Coronavirus, what we can do individually is to carry out preventive actions and constant hand hygiene is one of the most important ones in the fight against communicable diseases. RB is proud to partner with the Lagos State Government, and our goal is to reach 50,000 children in 20 local government areas of the state.”
Also speaking at the event, The Special Adviser for Sustainable Development Goals, Lagos State Government, Mrs. Solape Hammond, also added that, “This is a year in which Lagos State Government has decided to focus on SDG6 and SDG3 which relate to the health and environment pillars. It’s very important that sanitation and wellbeing are taken very seriously. Now with what is going on with Coronavirus, we know that it is a disease that is easily communicable, but the chances of its spread are greatly reduced when people wash their hands, so we are encouraging every Lagosian out there to adopt these hygiene practices.”
Through the School Hygiene Programme, Dettol uses teaching aids and fun activities to educate school children on good hygiene practices and various ways that they can protect themselves against germs. Over the past 7 years, Dettol has educated over 5 million children and teachers through it’s School Hygiene Program.
As part of its commitment to encourage healthy hygiene practices among Nigerians in 2020, Dettol is partnering with more public sector organizations to deliver hygiene education as a strategy to drive hygiene behaviour change in Nigeria.
