ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A portable plastic box decorated with smiling frogs and a bright green logo could help prevent thousands of people in Cambodia from falling sick with diarrhoea, claim its developers.

The sink, which has the appearance of a toy, dispenses up to 15 litres of water through a low-flow spout. It can be placed at a height easily reachable by children and its aim is to encourage regular hand washing after using the toilet and before preparing food.

Labobo is being marketed by Watershed, a charity working to improve water and sanitation in south-east Asia.

"Hand washing is an enormous opportunity to improve health because it is such a cheap and effective solution," said Watershed regional programme manager Geoff Revell.

"If you give people a bucket and a piece of soap, more often than not you will find the bucket ends up being used for something else. But if people spend money on a product they like and actually want to own, it's much more likely that they will keep using it and form a healthy habit of washing their hands regularly."

Despite awareness-raising campaigns, regular handwashing is a challenge in Cambodia where 60 per cent of the rural population still defecate in the open and only 44 per cent are able to wash their hands with soap and water, according to WHO. The association claims that regular hand washing can help prevent nearly half the world's cases of diarrhoea, which kills nearly 800,000 children every year.

With 38 deaths per 1,000 live births, Cambodia has one of the highest under-five mortality rates in the region according to World Bank data.