Hand sanitisers and masks are just temporary fixes to keep the Covid-19 at bay. But without access to soap and clean water, more than 2 billion people in low and middle-income nations including India, which are home to quarter of the world's population, have a greater likelihood of acquiring and transmitting the coronavirus than those in wealthy countries, according to a global study.
"Handwashing is one of the key measures to prevent COVID transmission, yet it is distressing that access is unavailable in many countries that also have limited health care capacity," said Dr Michael Brauer, professor at Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine, which currently has one of the world's leading models of the coronavirus of the pandemic.
The study published in the recent journal ‘Environmental Health Perspectives’ noted that in 46 countries, more than half of people lacked access to soap and clean water. In Nigeria, China, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia, more than 50 million persons in each were estimated to be without handwashing access, it added.
"Temporary fixes, such as hand sanitizer or water trucks, are just that - temporary fixes," Brauer said. "But implementing long-term solutions is needed to protect against COVID and the more than 700,000 deaths each year due to poor handwashing access," Brauer said.
Even with 25 per cent of the world's population lacking access to effective handwashing facilities, there have been "substantial improvements in many countries" between 1990 and 2019, Brauer said. Those countries include Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nepal, and Tanzania, which have improved their nations' sanitation.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization predicted 190,000 people in Africa could die of Covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic, and that upward of 44 million of the continent's 1.3 billion people could be infected with the Coronavirus.
For India’s homeless and urban poor too who live in thousands of slums across cities like Dharavi slums in Mumbai which is now hub of Covid19 cases, maintaining good hygiene can be nearly impossible.
According a study by WaterAid, a global advocacy group on water and sanitation, published in 2018, more than 163 million people in India do not have access to clean water, the highest in the world. Climate change is likely to add several challenges on water resources front.
The Government on its part has launched Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) that aims to provide piped water to every household in urban areas while Swajal scheme in around 115 rural districts in India to provide clean drinking water.
Experts assert that keeping hands clean is one of the easiest and best ways to prevent transmission of the new coronavirus, in addition to social distancing.
