Need for Hygiene and Sanitation

What is Hygiene?

Hygiene is a set of personal practices that contribute to good health. This includes washing hands, cutting hair/nails periodically, bathing, etc.

What is Sanitation?

Sanitation refers to public health conditions such as drinking clean water, sewage treatment, etc. All the effective tools and actions that help in keeping the environment clean come under sanitation.

Also Read: Health and Hygiene

Read on to explore the importance of hygiene and sanitation.

Importance of Hygiene and Sanitation

Maintaining personal hygiene and sanitation is important for several reasons such as personal, social, psychological, health, etc. Proper hygiene and sanitation prevent the spread of diseases and infections. If every individual on the planet maintains good hygiene for himself and the things around him, diseases will eradicate to a great level.

Importance of Hygiene

Hygiene, as defined by the WHO refers to “the conditions and practices that help maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases.”

This means more than just keeping ourselves clean. This means shunning all practices that lead to bad health. Throwing garbage on the road, defecating in the open, and many more. By adopting such a practice, we not only make ourselves healthier but also improve the quality of our lives.

Personal hygiene means keeping the body clean, consumption of clean drinking water, washing fruits and vegetables before eating, washing one’s hand, etc. Public hygiene refers to discarding waste and excreta properly, that means, waste segregation and recycling, regular disinfection and maintenance of the city’s water reservoir. Quality of hygiene in the kitchens is extremely important to prevent diseases.

Diseases spread through vectors. Say the vector is contaminated water as in the case of typhoid, cholera, and amoebiasis (food poisoning). By drinking clean water, we can completely eliminate the chances of getting diseases.

Some diseases are caused by pathogens carried by insects and animals. For eg., plague is carried by rats, malaria, filarial, roundworms by flies and mosquitoes, etc.

Mosquitoes thrive in stagnant water and rats in garbage dumps and the food that is dumped out in the open. By spraying stagnant water bodies with kerosene or other chemicals, we can completely eliminate mosquitoes from our neighbourhood. If that is unfeasible, we can all use mosquito nets prevents us from mosquitoes while we’re asleep. This poses a physical barrier for the mosquito.

Rats thrive on unsystematic waste disposal. By segregating the waste we can ensure that we don’t leave food lying around for rats to eat. Close contact with sick people is also another way of contracting diseases.

A country has to strive to educate more doctors so that medical need of every citizen is taken care of. The importance of cleanliness should be inculcated in every citizen and this will in turn show in the cleanliness of the places we live in.

Importance of Sanitation

Sanitation is another very important aspect. Many of the common diseases mentioned earlier such as roundworms spread through the faeces of infected people. By ensuring that people do not defecate in the open, we can completely eliminate such diseases and even more severe ones such as the one caused by E. Coli.
The advancement in biology has given us answers to many questions, we are now able to identify the pathogen and treat an ailment accordingly.

Also Read: Health and Diseases

For more detailed information about what is hygiene, what is sanitation, the Importance of Hygiene and Sanitation, keep visiting BYJU’S website or download BYJU’S app for further reference.