In 1998 GSK launched an initiative called PHASE – Personal Hygiene And Sanitation Education – to provide hygiene education for school children, with the aim of reducing diarrhoea-related disease and deaths associated with poor hygiene.

PHASE started in partnership with AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation) and operates in Kenya, Nicaragua and Peru, where GSK has committed £1.2 million for its roll-out. In Latin America, GSK works with the child-focused development charity Plan International. In Kenya, 83,000 children in 247 schools are benefiting from this basic education, while in Nicaragua it will reach over 27,000 primary school children and 20,000 in Peru.

PHASE empowers children and their families to take responsibility for their own health and sanitation. Communities around the participating schools have also benefited, with most homes now having containers for handwashing, pit latrines and refuse pits.

Evaluation of the Kenyan programme has shown that, as a result of PHASE, children have a better understanding of the causes of diarrhoea and worm infestations, and know about ways to prevent infection. Teachers have seen improvements in school attendance and report that children are now much cleaner and take better care of their personal hygiene. Data from one class show that the percentage of children who knew that washing hands after going to the toilet could prevent worms increased from 20 per cent before PHASE to 45 per cent afterwards.

The success of the programme has been such that the Kenyan government has incorporated PHASE into the national curriculum, increasing the likelihood of these benefits being available to other parts of Kenya.