Glittery Marketing Boosts Hand-Washing Efforts
Where soap and water are scarce, public health officials are promoting hand washing by using glitter to demonstrate the spread of disease, and linking the practice to good motherhood.
Wash your hands—it's the advice of parents, doctors, and many advertisements, especially during cold and flu season.
That's because the simple act of scrubbing your hands with soap is a cheap and quick way to prevent some diseases.
In the developing world, hand washing is even more critical. An estimated 2.2 million children under the age of five die from diarrheal diseases each year, spread in part by dirty hands—both their own and their caregivers’, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Hand washing with soap—along with household water treatment and sanitation—can reduce rates of diarrheal diseases by 44 percent, according to WHO.
But public health experts have to spend millions of dollars a year persuading people to wash their hands. And
