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‘Baseline Survey on Hygiene Promotion through Routine Immunisation in Nepal 2015’ is envisioned to define, test and implement a simple and scalable hygiene promotion package in different districts of Nepal as a pilot project in the first phase. This programmme is being implemented by Ministry of Health and Population in collaboration with WaterAid and other key stakeholders through routine immunisation to demonstrate, with the view to expand and scale-up, the promotion of safe hygiene practices in Nepal.

In this regard, Health Research and Social development Forum (HERD) is conducting a baseline survey in order to scale-up the hygiene promotion activities and assess the hygiene and immunisation status of the pilot districts - Jajarkot, Bardiya, Nawalparasi and Myagdi. The main outcome of this survey is to assess the feasibility of integrating hygiene promotion into the immunisation programme under normal service delivery circumstances by ensuring the achievement of hygiene behaviour change and strengthening the immunisation programme in a cost-effective way.

A debriefing session was organised on June 22, Monday with presence of WaterAid representative, HERD staff and the field researchers. The researchers shared their experiences, learning as well as provided suggestions to the improvement of the programme.

Binod Dulal, Myagdi

The experience was one of a kind, we had some good memories. The people were very supportive; still there were issues which created hurdles. We had difficulty in finding households and respondents due to poor recording in EPI register. We were not able to collect secondary data. The respondents felt uneasy during observation due to various cultural, religious and hygienic reasons.  We were even scared to go and check toilets in some places as it smelled bad and we could see sewage outside the toilets; it further created fear of various diseases among the researchers. But at the end we successfully completed the task which was an achievement.

Jay Krishna Neupane, Jajarkot

It was a different experience as we had to adjust ourselves in an unhygienic environment. There was no practice of sanitation and hygiene in Jajarkot. When we left from Kathmandu, we were haunted by the rumour of swine flu, but it was not as scary as it was rumoured to be. Working in such geographical and unhygienic setting was a challenge which developed team spirit and confidence among the team members.

 

Dr. Khakindra Bhandari, representative from WaterAid also thanked the field researchers for their commendable work of data collection despite several obstacles in the field.

HERD team is currently analysing the collected data and preparing report of the study.

Contributors: Kritagya Regmi, Nabita Sharma and Anju Bhatta