Cologne/Bonn. Yesterday night, Malteser International presented its new movie about its projects for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in Sri Lanka to the public. With striking images, director Martin Hilbert from Aquino Film showed that there is no need for a developed and expensive technology in order to provide clean drinking water and a working waste water system. Amazingly easy solutions - rainwater harvesting tanks, bio-sandfilters, solar water disinfection (SODIS) or water disinfection through cooking - can protect thousands of people from dangerous diseases.
During the following panel discussion, Dr. Peter Schmitz, Chief Medical Officer of Malteser International, regretted that diseases caused by bad hygiene attract almost no public interest. "Nobody likes to talk about diarrhoea, even though each day more children die of dysentery than of Malaria and AIDS. We need to discuss the problem of diarrhoea and its causes openly! Only this way we can get the responsible persons to engage for an improvement of the conditions."
Professor Dr. Martin Exner, Director of the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health of the University of Bonn underlined that simple methods in this area can have big success. "It is important to transmit simple methods to the people, like washing their hands, and to motivate them to make use of their new knowledge. This starts in kindergarten and at school."
Dr. Manfred Konukiewitz from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Develop-ment of Germany emphasized that the German politics has recognised the problem: "That is why we just support those water-projects that also incorporate basic sanitation and hygiene."
Attention editorial staff: Malteser International is happy to provide you with its new movie about the projects for water, sanitation and hygiene in Sri Lanka. Please contact: +49 221 9822-213 or info@malteser-international.org
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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