ACCESS TO HANDHYGIENE IN SOUTH EAST ASIA IN RELATION TO COVID-19: A REVIEW

Abstract

The present review aims at gathering refocus on access to handwashing in South East Asia. It is because, here nearly half of the households, schools and about one fourth of the health care centers lack the basic handwashing facility and that too at the time when about one third of global new COVID-19 positive cases are getting reported from this region these days. Data on access to, handwashing device having soap and water availability, in South Asia is mainly based on the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF JMP) Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2020). In addition various relevant research and review papers were reviewed using the key words such as handwashing, South East Asia, Hand hygiene, and COVID-19. There is a high need to reaccess the factor of hand hygiene in South East Asia in relation to COVID-19 for the control of the present pandemic and other such challenges, particularly in South East Asia.