According to the myth, disaster relief work is a pretty glamorous affair, all off-road driving and high-adrenaline food drops. However the truth is a little different, even in a country as notorious as Afghanistan. For it is here, in the land of the Taliban, secret mountain passes and satellite surveillance that Tearfund’s Disaster Management Team has been working alongside local people to help prevent the spread of disease through basic health and hygiene education. That’s right: they’ve been teaching people how to wash their hands.
By establishing Hygiene Committees the team has started a chain reaction that is already delivering results. Some of the men and women on the committees have had meetings with their children’s school principals regarding water and sanitation and general hygiene education. Many have become increasingly concerned about the conditions of latrines and the availability of water in their children’s schools, making personal visits to assess the conditions.
People are also becoming more aware of basic health and hygiene issues and are teaching others informally. In one case, women in a hygiene group learned that landi (a snack that Afghans often prepare in the winter by slicing raw meat and allowing it to sit and dry overnight) had actually been the cause of their children’s ill health. Many of them would carry this raw meat in their pockets to eat while in school, and as a result several of these children had been battling stomach worms for over two years. When they realised where the root cause of the worms was, they began to speak out to other parents at the school, warning them of the dangers and helping prevent further illness in the future.
One project – an impact survey – concluded that there had been a 39 per cent decrease in the occurrence of communicable diseases since it started work. This substantial behaviour change hasn’t just shown up in the statistics; group members have been able to see physical changes in the cleanliness of the school children and have often heard stories from the young people about how the health and hygiene courses had enabled them to help their families in times of need.
One boy came to the project staff and told them about how he’d helped his sister survive a case of diarrhoea and dehydration. When his sister’s situation became serious, he told his mother that he had learned that she should boil water and give it to his sister periodically through the day and night. The boy’s mother didn’t believe him, so he did it himself. His sister’s symptoms gradually disappeared, as did his mother’s cynicism. Now, the boy’s mother has become active in the area hygiene committee and is growing as a community advocate for health and hygiene.
These everyday miracles of clean hands, washed dishes and boiled water might not seem like much, but they help – bit by bit – to strengthen life’s hold in a country where people are vulnerable.