NGO spreading cleanliness awareness at Gandhi Hospital

Secunderabad: Helping Hand Foundation, an NGO working in the healthcare space has come up with a novel idea of spreading awareness on cleanliness and ‘hand hygiene’ techniques at Gandhi Hospital by using thermocol based boards with embedded images of hand washing techniques.

Virus/bacteria especially in the case of diarrhoea kills 1.3 million children below the age of 5 years globally every year and half of these deaths occur in just 5 countries that includes India as per a UNICEF report. Many diseases could be prevented if basic hygiene is followed. “Our Volunteers have counselled attenders not to bring children into wards and this seems to be working well and one attender per patient norm is also being followed largely said, Mujtaba Hasan Askari’ of Helping Hand Foundation.

With the monsoon season at its peak and with spike in incidence of seasonal diseases like cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea, H1N1, Respiratory tract infections etc, good hand- hygiene can play a major role in prevention of most these infectious diseases caused by contaminated food and water. The Volunteers City NGO, Helping Hand Foundation which runs “Swachh Gandhi” program at Gandhi Hospital have come up with a Novel concept of creating awareness about ‘Hand Hygiene’ techniques which are seldomly known to patients by using thermocol based boards with embedded images of hand washing techniques.

The HHF volunteers led by Naresh intend to create more such health & hygiene messaging for the benefit of patients and attenders at GGH covering topics like management of bed sores, waste management, do & don’ts in waiting areas etc. The Swachh Gandhi campaign initiated by HHF earlier this year in Feb, 2018, has reached out to 1100 – 1200 in-patients and double the number of patient attenders in last 24 weeks of its operations at Gandhi Hospital.

Dobbala Naresh, volunteer of HHF created this thermocol boards said “The plan is to cover patients and attenders in all major IP wards.”Gandhi Hospital Superintendent, Dr P Shravan Kumar said “We are the first in the state-run hospital to run a sensitization program on hygiene and sanitation.”