SQ Group celebrates Global Handwashing Day 2016

October 17, 2016

SQ Group has celebrated the Global Handwashing Day across all its manufacturing units. The program was organized as a part of the Health & Hygiene tower of the Better Life initiative. Better Life is an unique employee developmental initiative of SQ Group. This program addresses some of the key personal developmental areas of our people, in addition to on-the-job supervisory and skill improvement training programs.

 

Global Handwashing Day (GHD) is a campaign to motivate and mobilize people around the world to improve their handwashing habits by washing their hands with soap at critical moments throughout each day. It takes place on 15 October of each year. The campaign is dedicated to raising awareness of handwashing with soap as a key approach to disease prevention.

Hand washing with soap is extremely effective and the most inexpensive way to prevent diarrhea and acute respiratory infections (ARI). Pneumonia, a major ARI, is the number one cause of mortality among children under five years old, taking the life of an estimated 1.8 million children per year. Diarrhea and pneumonia together account for almost 3.5 million child deaths annually. Handwashing with soap is estimated to reduce incidents of diarrhea by 30% and respiratory infections by 21% in children under the age of five.

 

Two separate programs were organized in two manufacturing locations of SQ Group. One was at SQ’s industrial park called the SQ Station located at Bhaluka, Mymensingh, the other one was at SQ Celsius Ltd., located at Maona, Gazipur.

The participants of the program were the Participation Committee (PC) members of SQ Group. They are the representatives of the people and thus they are given the opportunity to contribute in the development of the people. The program consisted of an elaborate session on the importance of handwashing and overall Health & Hygiene practices. It was followed by a handwashing exercise where all the participants washed their hands using water and soap following step by step instructions from an expert in-house doctor. Few educational videos were also played during the program. Those videos also ran throughout the day in the common spaces such as canteen. An important part of the program was the selection of the Ambassadors for the Health & Hygiene tower. The ambassadors will be carrying out regular activities to improve the lifestyles of SQ’s employees. SQ Management team was present throughout the program and handed over a token of recognition to the ambassadors at the end.