Leading global health soap brand Lifebuoy is harnessing the power of women to make handwashing with soap an everyday habit. Mothers, health providers and birth attendants can be influential advocates. In particular, motherhood is one of the most profound and lifechanging events in a woman’s life irrespective of culture or geography. Mothers hold the key to instilling positive handwashing behaviours in their homes and communities.
Children benefit from handwashing. Photo credit: Lifebuoy
Lifebuoy joined forces with the U.S. Agency for International Development and its Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) to create a neonatal programme to raise awareness of the link between newborn survival and handwashing with soap. Help a Child Reach 5 uses innovative videos to share the importance of handwashing.
Lifebuoy has an ambitious target of changing the handwashing behaviour of one billion people by 2015, thereby reducing preventable deaths of children under 5 from diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia. It is this profound cause that helps us to get persuasive advocates- distinguished Indian actress Kajol supports the cause of handwashing with soap and Help a Child Reach 5. She is calling on people, governments, UN agencies and policymakers to scale up handwashing as the most cost effective intervention to save child lives.
Over 40% of under-five deaths occur within the first 28 days of a child’s life, the neonatal period. Simple, low-cost health interventions – such as handwashing with soap at key occasions- can reduce this figure by up to 70 per cent. Despite this, handwashing with soap is not universally practiced. We know that a simple solution- handwashing with soap- can make a drastic difference in stopping preventable newborn deaths. Lifebuoy is passionate about saving child lives and has the global scale to do something about it.
The program targets new mothers and birth attendants through antenatal clinics and health workers. We communicate the potential of handwashing with soap to reduce neonatal infections, but do not stop there. The Help a Child Reach 5 campaign makes a health appeal to the most powerful of all emotions- the maternal instinct. ‘Helping your child survive’ – is the sole message to initiate long lasting changes. Handwashing messages are delivered to generate awareness, but also get commitment to handwash, habitual routine practice of handwashing, and positive reinforcement for handwashing. It builds in the motivators of behaviour change among new mothers such as the desire to nurture and for social recognition. It empowers mothers to keep their babies protected, which is of ultimate emotional significance to mothers.
Public private partnerships are critical to deliver messages to new mothers. Health organizations and governments have on the ground expertise to ensure health workers deliver the messages to new mothers in a scalable and sustainable way. This programme draws on Lifebuoy’s marketing and consumer expertise as well as MCHIP’s ability to reach and scale up outreach to millions of new mothers achieve maximum impact.
Building healthy habits among mothers means changing behaviours and choices. Lifebuoy aims to be much more than just a soap and stand in women’s minds as something positive and meaningful for life. Once a new mother’s mindset is changed, habitual handwashing with soap will become a naturally ingrained behaviour. This can have a ripple effect to other new mothers and the entire community and will help fulfil Lifebuoy’s vision of bringing health and hygiene to 1 billion people.
Learn more about USAID’s work in water, sanitation, and hygiene.
For more information on the Help a Child Reach 5 campaign, please watch some of these videos: www.youtube.com/helpachildreach5
