Hygiene and Good Health
October 15 is International Hand-Washing Day, an event that is commemorated in Indonesia, particularly where the government is implementing sanitation projects. Around 70 million Indonesians reportedly still excrete their bodily waste not in the proper places, shamefully coming in third in the list of countries with such unhygienic habits, after China and India. Such a condition can lead to diarrhea, acute respiratory diseases and malaria. The government has set 2014 as the time when such unhygienic habits are eradicated in Indonesia. In some of the regions, local governments collaborating with NGOs have come up with creative projects to eradicate this unhygienic habit. Tempo English Edition looks at some of these projects in areas of Papua, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and Nias.
October 20, 2010
AN unsavory whiff emanates from a village security post in Kwamki Lama, Mimika Baru district, Papua. Human feces cover the entire 2-square-meter floor of the hut. Moses, a doctor at the Kwamki Lama health center, said that residents of Kwamki were not overly particular about where they went to the toilet. “It’s because they don’t have any toilets,” he stressed. “None of the houses around here have toilets.”
Meanwhile, in West Nusa Te
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