Gul Panag teaches hygiene to Delhi school kids

Apr 7, 2010 IANS

New Delhi, April 7 (IANS) Bollywood actress Gul Panag Wednesday taught correct ways of personal health and hygiene to children from 10 Delhi schools on the occasion of World Health Day.

Calling upon school kids to develop good hygiene habits to prevent water and sanitation related diseases, Gul said: "It is not an ordinary event because thousands of children die due to unhygienic conditions in our country."

Every day, hundreds of children below the age of five die in India from diarrhoea and other sanitation-related diseases.

The programme was organised by Sulabh International School Sanitation Club.

Bindeshwar Pathak, chairman of Sulabh International, while noting that the practice of defecating in the open was responsible for more deaths than war, said: "India tops the list of countries where people defecate in the open."

"It is well known that open defecation causes intestinal diseases along with many others caused by poor hygiene and sanitation. At any given time, patients suffering from water-related diseases occupy half of the world's hospital beds," he added.

Bollywood actor Aamir Khan too is set to teach health and hygiene to students of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)-affiliated schools and the human resource development ministry was coordinating with the actor.

According to Unicef, at least 40 percent of diarrhoea cases among school children across developing countries, including India, result from transmission in schools rather than homes.