LAOS, When a Blackboard is Not Enough
Gang is seven-year-old schoolgirl, who knows what you should do before eating and after going to the toilet. "If you don't wash your hands you will get diarrhea and a stomach ache," she explains.
Gang has learnt this from Yuwa, her teacher in the village school; he teaches all children between grades one to four about hygiene. Knowledge and understanding about hygiene in the village is strong.
UNICEF/ HQ06-1709/Ruby E. Quinones
But there is a problem; the school, like the rest of the village, lacks proper sanitation facilities. Yuwa can stand at the blackboard and teach the importance of keeping latrines clean, and of washing hands with soap and of the other aspects of hygiene: but there are no latrines, no sinks and there is no water supply.
Gang explains about diarrhea to her classmates.
"When we need the toilet, we go in the bushes," says Gang.
Yuwa has to make all his pupils carry two flasks of water to school each day – one of drinking water and one of non-boiled water to use for hand washing.
He teaches all his students about hygiene as part of a lesson that encompasses environmental and health-related topics, but the situation is far from satisfactory. "It is difficult because the children can't put what I teach them into practice," says Yuwa. "Without any sanitation facilities, I can't actually show them what they should be doing."
Collecting water from an unprotected source, to be used for washing hands at school.
Yuwa says that he makes sure that the children wash their hands when they are at school, but clearly, he cannot enforce the rule at other times. "I think they do but I can't be sure," he admits.
Despite Yuwa's efforts, diarrhea remains a serious issue for the village's 78 families. "The worst outbreaks occur at the end of the rainy season," he says. "Every year, one or two of our children die."
