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Of course, as you surely know by now, washing your hands is a major means of  stopping the spread of COVID-19.  

A multi-sectoral meeting was held at the Radisson this morning, its purpose, to establish standard operating procedures for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Initiatives for Belize. 

And as members of the task force came together to sign a commitment mural promoting good hygiene in schools throughout the country we got to find out a bit more about all the moving parts on the frontlines of this latest public health crisis:

Kathleen Azueta-Cho - Technical Advisor, Health and Nutrition Coordinator
"We are basically reviewing a draft standard operating procedures for Was in schools communities and for parents and the idea is to have these guidelines for schools and communities to oversee the different facilities that we have. Bathroom facilities to highlight the importance of water and sanitation and hygiene and right now this is especially important given the public health crisis that we are facing with COVID-19 so we can’t stress, we keep stressing the importance of handwashing especially among our young people, our young students and it seems so basic but it’s something that is very key and instrumental it’s a key protecting factor and we keep pushing that message out there in the wider community so the draft standard operating procedure does come at an ideal time. We have UNICEF and UNICEF is the overall body who provides technical support along with PAHO and we have the ministry of education who provides another key partner because of their role in the educational institutions and them have that HFLE curriculum already in place and they cover some of those topics so the WASH technical working group would pretty much strengthen these alliances to go into the schools and carry on the education messages we also have the Red Cross Society and they do have their fast program as well, going out into the communities teaching about the emergency responses as well as hygiene practices. So these are all technical individuals from these line ministries or organizations that have that knowledge and expertise within their organization and so everybody comes to the table and they can contribute in areas that they are more knowledgeable in."

Denise Robateau - Early Childhood Development and Education Officer, UNICEF
"Proper hygiene is never out of season every single day and every season we should be practicing proper handwashing techniques, proper hygiene etiquette and we work continually around the year with the ministry of health with the Ministry of education to ensure that our school children are safe we have community health workers who go into the communities who are constantly training and teaching and modeling by example what should be done. This is the same in our health centers and all over. So if there is a lack of proper hygiene then there is an onset of diseases. Teachers have HFLE corners in their classrooms they have different methodologies on how to teach and how to make learning fun. There is a school Health manual that was done in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders actually so materials are there. A multi-sectoral body worked on communication materials, posters, PSA’s but really it is up to the teacher and the trainer to make the material fun. We just hope that everyone will take this to heart and we want to maximize during this time as well in terms of what’s happening so that this behavior will continue even after the threat of COVID-19."

The program also focuses on teaching best practices on menstrual hygiene, even providing free menstrual kits as accessories to trainings provided by community outreach officers.