Hygiene Promotion: A Practical Manual for Relief and Development

Indispensable for fieldworkers on projects or programmes aiming to reduce the incidence of water-and sanitation-related diseases, it will also be useful for other relief and development workers, particularly those working in the fields of community development, health, and engineering. The authors describe a wide range of approaches to hygiene promotion that can be used in different settings. Central to these approaches is a commitment to working in collaboration with people and encouraging them to take more control over the factors that influence their lives. The authors stress the need for a form of hygiene promotion that fosters capacity-building rather than the provision of information alone. The opening chapter of the manual introduces the reader to the context of emergency relief and development projects and provides insights into current hygiene promotion theory. These chapters draw together the experience of hygiene promotion fieldworkers in many emergency and rehabilitation, water, sanitation, and hygiene programmes undertaken by CARE and other agencies. The annex comprises other useful material including a series of concise "how-to-do" guides, pictures for use or adaptation in the field, information about hygiene-related diseases and how to prevent them, and an annotated bibliography

Marion O'Reilly is Senior Health Advisor, Oxfam Great Britain.