Welcome to the sixth issue of the COVID-19 Hygiene Hub News Bulletin. This week we are sharing how the National Sanitation Campaign in Tanzania is getting national celebrities involved to promote COVID-19 behaviours and a Facebook Group in Nepal who are working to encourage hygiene behaviours through videos, questions and discussion! If you would like to post a case study from your organisation or have a question on any of the case studies we have posted, we encourage you to share it with us. As ever, you can also learn about the most frequently asked questions we have had over the last two weeks and the range of new resources available for COVID-19 response below.

Common enquiries this past week included:

Please see our resource article updated with the latest evidence on masks and fabric masks here

Read this guide on how to identify appropriate behavioural techniques and channels here.

Check here for what works best to clean hard surfaces here.

In response to web enquiries and discussions with partner organisations, we have continued to develop and revise our resource documents on a range of topics related to COVID-19 response.

Resources we have updated with new evidence this and last week include:

Want to access other resources or these resources in other languages? Click these links for French, Arabic and Spanish.

If you have requests or ideas for future resources, please email us at support@hygienehub.info.

IMAGE: Sylvia Mkomwa, a finalist in the 2017 Miss Universe Tanzania competition, holding her hands in the “U” shape associated with the COVID-19 media campaign.

Our first highlight comes from the National Sanitation Campaign, named Nyumba Ni Choo, and their coronavirus response starting March 2020. The campaign joined the World Health Organisation’s #SafeHands challenge in collaborating with celebrities from a wide range of sectors (including football players, musical artists, government officials and fashion models) to demonstrate good hand washing practice and encourage people to practice it regularly. Several of the celebrities also serve as campaign spokespeople. Read more here to understand how the “U” shape symbolises the word “Unategemewa” from the new campaign tagline. The two hands symbolise two people standing apart (physical distancing) but joined together in a collaborative effort to fight the virus. The idea with this re-branding was to highlight the importance of all Tanzanians working together to combat COVID-19.

Our second project highlight is from Nepal where two WASH and public health workers set up the group “I’m your Hygiene Counsellor ((म तपाईंको स्वच्छता परामर्शदाता)”. They have been posting videos, resources and tools in Nepali for the population to interact with. Outside of the cities in Nepal, few people have access to television and radio. But the expansion of mobile networks and their cheap data packages has led to a dramatic change in communication methods and now people routinely use Facebook for communication and information sharing. Here is a video from their programme that you can watch on Facebook. For more information read their case study on the Hygiene Hub website.

And in case you missed these, we’ve delivered a series of webinars in partnership with the Global Wash Cluster providing an overview of the Hygiene Hub and discussing ways of working with our global network of partners. Listen to English, Spanish, French or Arabic recordings of the webinar and access the Q&A.