Include Hygiene in post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals - NGO

Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Media Foundation, a human right and anti-corruption media Non-Governmental Organisation, has urged key United Nations (UN) decision makers, to ensure the inclusion of Hygiene in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

According to him, hygiene was a critical component of global health development, but regretted that while it was included alongside sanitation in Target 6.2 of the current draft of the SDGs, it was neglected in the SDGs at the indicator level.

This means that hygiene would not be measured globally, the target to improve it would not be monitored, and the SDGs might not improve hygiene as much as they could, Mr Ahenu told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Sunyani.

Hygiene, specifically hand-washing with soap, he explained, was one of the most important interventions for human health and development, and it was a universal necessity as well.

Fundamental to fighting under-nutrition, reducing child mortality, overcoming antibiotic resistance, and advancing access to education, Mr Ahenu noted that hygiene underpinned the delivery of several other SDGs, and ultimately advanced gender equity, dignity and human rights.

“If hygiene is neglected in the SDGs at the indicator level this will be to the detriment of those populations who have the most to gain through global development – the vulnerable”, he added.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene, he argued, ought to be prioritized in the SDGs, which meant “we must have a hygiene indicator”.