Our study was just published in the Lancet, a great collaboration between a team from LSHTM*, WHO, UBC/IHME, and Emory. It’s a meta-analysis of interventions promoting handwashing with soap (HWWS) and their effectiveness in preventing acute respiratory infections (ARI) in low-income and middle-income countries (L&MICs). Our key result is that HWWS can reduce cases of… Continue reading New meta-analysis – handwashing promotion reduces respiratory infections by 17%
Tag: hygiene
What counts as a “handwashing facility” in global monitoring?
I've previously written about defining hygiene. In this post, I discuss what counts as a "handwashing facility" (HWF) for global monitoring purposes. Points arising that may not be obvious include: (i) an on-plot water point can be considered a HWF if that's where handwashing is most often practised (e.g. tubewell with handpump, yard tap); (ii)… Continue reading What counts as a “handwashing facility” in global monitoring?
Human capital and WASH – a note
Possible mechanisms by which WASH increases human capital In labour economics, human capital is a worker’s stock of knowledge and skills which contributes to their productivity and earnings. Human capital accumulation is a process of developing skills within and beyond cognitive domains, in which the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are crucial. In… Continue reading Human capital and WASH – a note
What is hygiene?
My rough Venn diagram of aspects of hygiene I’ve been doing a fair amount of work on hand hygiene since November, e.g. this piece on the economics of hygiene for the Hygiene Hub and some costing work for WHO/UNICEF. It bothered me that definitions were not clear, so I put together this Venn diagram. It… Continue reading What is hygiene?
What is transformative WASH?
Figure 1: Transformative in respect of what? This post summarises a note I have drafted on the definition of "transformative WASH", available here, with references. There has been a lot of talk about “transformative” WASH since the WASH-B, SHINE and MapSan results came out. I have previously written about those results here. The argument runs… Continue reading What is transformative WASH?
WASHeconomics.com 