TESTING A PARTICIPATORY STRATEGY TO CHANGE HYGIENE BEHAVIOR - FACE WASHING IN CENTRAL TANZANIA

A participatory strategy to increase face washing was designed and tes ted in central Tanzania. Changing children's face-washing behaviour is postulated to be important in preventing the transmission of eye dise ase, particularly blinding trachoma. The strategy used non-formal adul t education techniques at neighbourhood level meetings to build a comm unity consensus to keep children's faces clean for the prevention of e ye disease. Men, women, schoolchildren, traditional healers and villag e social groups participated in the intervention. The strategy was eva luated by observing changes in numbers of clean faces of a sample of p reschool children in the village. Clean faces increased from 9% to 33% over the course of a year. Factors which were related to sustained ch ange in children's clean faces included distance to water, age of the child, and presence of a corrugated metal roof. Owning cattle was asso ciated with lack of sustainable change in this population.