Sponsored Video: Continue Helping A Child Reach 5

Everyone is worried about he MERS virus in Saudi Arabia and there’s a good reason for this fear. Most MERS patients have succumbed to it due to various infections and diseases that got worse when they contracted the virus. Since there’s no vaccine yet to cure it, our workplace has stressed on the importance of proper hygiene especially on washing our hands. This brings to mind the campaign that Lifebuoy launched last year. 

Last year, Lifebuoy adopted Thesgora, Inda by teaching healthy hand washing habits and reduced the incidents of diarrhea from 36% to 5%. The mission to help celebrate every child’s fifth birthday by stopping the spread of preventable diseases is still on! This year, Lifebuoy is adopting Bitobe, Indonesia where many children also lose their lives before their fifth birthday to diseases. 

Mothers in of Utari, Indonesia are doing their best for their children.

In Indonesia, a tree is planted every time a child is born. But with the many cases of children’s death before they reach 5 years of age, the tree is all that remains. It is a must to help children live with the trees that symbolize them. 

Lifebuoy’s Help A Child Reach 5 campaign aims to help this village through the active promotion of health and hygiene education. The campaign was conceived based on research that 1.7 million children failed to reach their fifth birthday every year because of preventable infections and promotes handwashing with soap as a simple action that can save 600,000 child lives each year. Lifebuoy is committed to change the handwashing behavior of a billion people by 2015. 

For more information, visit www.lifebuoy.com. Washing our hands properly will not only prevent us from contracting diarrhea but also other viruses that causes sickness. The act of proper hand washing with soap is, more than ever, very timely.

This post is sponsored by Lifebuoy.

Sponsored Post: #HelpAChildReach5

The importance of proper hand washing has never been this significant in the modern world. With the onset of the Mers-Cov virus in the Kingdom, proper hand washing takes a vital role in preventing the spread of this disease. However, it's not only viruses that is being prevented from spreading when proper hand washing is done. There are a lot of other illnesses… like diarrheal diseases which we featured before in a video following Gondappa and his first child.

The village of Thesgora

Gondappa is a resident of Thesgora, an Indian village with the highest rate of diarrhea in the country. He is now celebrating his first child's fifth birthday as the world's 20 million people celebrate Global Handwashing Day. 

Global Handwashing Day, endorsed by various governments, international institutions, NGOs, private companies and individuals, focuses on children who suffers more from diarrheal and respiratory diseases. Our children, ever energetic, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas, remain to be the hope that will uphold the world. They need to be protected from diseases. 

And that is what Lifebuoy has done for the past 10 years, and is still doing today. Lifebuoy soap, launched in England by the Lever Brothers in 1895, has tried to prevent diseases and deaths by teaching children the simple act of washing their hands with soap. With their projects, they help children reach the age of five. You too can support this campaign by visiting the Lifebuoy Facebook page and pledging your support! 

Happy birthday to Gondappa's son… and happy Global Handwashing Day to all! 

This post has been sponsored by Lifebuoy, but all thoughts are our own.

Sponsored Video: Help A Child Reach 5

When washing my hands, I hum the Happy Birthday song from start to end twice. The 20 seconds I spend humming the song is an adequate amount of time to sud up, clean my hands, and improve hand hygiene. Keeping our hands clean is the easiest way to avoid getting sick because there are a lot of diseases that start and spread with dirty hands. One of them is diarrhoea. 

Diarrhoea, as we know it, is having three or more loose bowel movements in a day. For most of us, having diarrhoea is quite common. Some of us have it twice a year or so but we recover and move on quickly from it. However, did you know that diarrhoea is a common cause of death in developing countries? It’s also the second most common cause of infant deaths worldwide that in 2009, 1.5 million children under the age of 5 died because of diarrhoea. 

The residents of Thesgora

Lifebuoy, the soap company launched in England by the Lever Brothers in 1895, has been committed to health and hygiene education and has been helping various communities in the world to prevent diseases like diarrhoea through proper hand washing. One of these communities is Thesgora, a village in India with one of the highest rates of diarrhoea in the country. Lifebuoy aims to bring more awareness to Thesgora, and eventually to other villages, through a series of on-the-ground charity work to help more children reach their fifth birthday. 

Watch this heartwarming video of Gondappa, a resident of Thesgora, celebrate his son’s firth birthday… his first child to reach the age of 5. 

It’s easy for most of us to ignore proper hand washing but Lifebuoy educates us that the simple act of washing hands with soap can reduce the risk of diarrhoeal diseases by 42-47%. With Lifebuoy’s help, more and more children in Thesgora will survive to the age of 5 and beyond. Clean hands can definitely save lives! Encourage your children to wash their hands properly and frequently today! Start singing "Happy Birthdays" not only for washing hands but also for children in villages like Thesgora who will live to celebrate more birthdays in their lives. ;) 

Here are the reactions of parents to Gondappa's story...

This entry is sponsored by Lifebuoy.