Understanding Hand Washing Behaviour

Diarrheal diseases kill close to two million children each year; tens of thousands of these deaths occur in refugee camps. Hand washing with soap has been shown to reduce the risk of diarrhea by up to about a half1. There is less documentation, however, on how governments and aid agencies can increase hand washing with soap. The IRC and LSHTM team conducted formative research in three refugee camps in Thailand, Kenya and Ethiopia, with two objectives: 1. To understand the motivations, barriers and enabling factors for hand washing in long term refugee camp populations. 2. To produce a case study of how formative research on hand washing behavior could be used to develop communication plans to increase hand washing in long term refugee settings. SETTING The study took place from January to May 2011 in three long-term camps. Demographic and other background information on the camps is summarized in Table 1.