High 5 for clean hands

YOUR hands are arguably the body part you use the most throughout the day. You use them to hold a spoon, a pen, and even type on keyboards, not to mention all the different surfaces you have to touch.

Because of that, our hands tend to pick up and transfer a lot of germs and bacteria, and it’s probably for the best that we can’t actually see them multiplying on our palms.

To tackle the issue at its root, Lifebuoy is running its #High5forhandwashing campaign to celebrate squeaky clean hands, and as part of efforts to increase awareness about one of the easiest ways to prevent diseases.

The #High5forhandwashing advocacy campaign invites members of the public to join in by snapping a picture of their most inventive ‘High 5’ pose, and upload it onto social media platforms, together with the campaign’s hashtag.

For each tagged post, Lifebuoy will commit to teaching five children proper handwashing techniques.

“Through our programme, we are targeting to collect 200,000 High5 hashtags, thereby committing to teach one million kids [proper] handwashing techniques in 2018,” said Unilever Malaysia marketing director Vincent Chong.

On a global scale, the campaign has seen Lifebuoy teaming up with over 140 public figures, as well as sending out more than 5,000 of its agents to schools, in order to stress the importance of fostering good handwashing habits to curb contagious illnesses like the flu, food poisoning, and cholera.

Lifebuoy hopes to establish real change through appropriate habitual hygiene, starting with young children, by inculcating the right hand-washing etiquette, especially before every meal, and after using the toilet.

Chong added: “After applying soap, it’s not enough to just rinse your hands quickly, you should rub every part of your hands for thorough handwashing.

“Keeping hands clean through improved hand hygiene is one of the most essential steps in decreasing one’s vulnerability to infectious diseases.”