Hygiene for Health is a historical community-care initiative outside our current six core programs. The narrative below includes historical statements and statistics from 2013 and 2015; these are source context, not current statistics or confirmed activity dates.
Historical initiative
Hygiene for Health is retained here as part of Smiles Africa’s earlier community-care work. The current core portfolio comprises six programs. This historical page is not a statement that a new intake or recurring activity schedule is active.
Hygiene for Health (H4H)
This project involves cleaning and medical activities. It’s carried out 4 times a year. Our program helps provide basic medications (vitamins, first aid, painkillers, cleaning supplies, hygiene kits and hygiene education) During this program we help clean homes and communities, we create water systems for homes and communities provide community heath centers with basic medical equipment that benefit the people of the community we also donate sanitary and hygiene kits.
Motivation
In developing countries in Africa one of the causes for death is poor hygiene and lack of medication or well equipped medical facilities.
According to WHO approximately 1.6 million Africans died of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-related illnesses in 2015. These diseases can be prevented or treated with timely access to appropriate and affordable medicines, vaccines and other health services. But less than 2% of drugs consumed in Africa are produced on the continent, meaning that many sick patients do not have access to locally produced drugs and may not afford to buy the imported ones.