Case Study

Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education (PHASE)

Every year more than two million people die of diarrhoea-related disease, mostly children in developing countries. Many of these deaths could have been easily prevented through better hand washing and sanitation.

Our PHASE project is helping to reduce diarrhoea-related disease by encouraging school children to wash their hands. We established PHASE in 1998 and since then have invested over £1.7 million ($3.1 million) and reached approximately 375,000 children. PHASE operates in eight countries and is run in partnership with AMREF, Plan International and Save the Children – as well as Ministries of Health and Education.

The programme has had impressive results. For example, evaluation from a sample of PHASE schools in Nicaragua over a four year period indicated that the frequency of hand washing among pupils after using the toilet increased five-fold, while the proportion of children reporting diarrhoea in a two week period fell from over 40 per cent to just 13 per cent.

In 2007 we plan to launch PHASE in Kibera, Kenya - Africa’s largest slum. This will be the first time PHASE has operated in an informal settlement, creating a model for improving children's health in one of the hardest urban communities.