Seven Interventions
Bopoma Villages’ team developed the Healthy Homes Program — seven simple interventions that work together to build healthy families and communities.
1. Drink Clean Water
Clean drinking water is an essential first step towards a safe and healthy home. Water from a BioSand filter is clean, has no bad odour or taste, and is even cool! Once filtered, the water must be stored in a clean closed container.
2. Wash your hands
A tippy tap provides a hands-free source of running water for handwashing. If soap is not available, wood ash is an effective cleaning agent and readily available. Hands should be washed before preparing food, eating or feeding children, and after using the toilet or changing a baby.
3. Don’t Breathe Smoke
Cooking in rural areas is usually done over open fires in small huts. The toxic smoke produced is a cause of illness and death for women and small children. Bopoma Villages’ team teaches families to build rocket stoves that are used outside and require less wood to generate more heat with less smoke. The health benefits last a lifetime!
4. Say goodbye to flies
Flies can carry more than 1 million bacteria on their bodies. These bacteria are easily transferred to people through contaminated surfaces and food causing infections and disease including typhoid fever, E. coli, and cholera. Effective traps are easy to make using discarded plastic bottles.
5. Eat Your Greens
A diet consisting mainly of maize meal may prevent starvation but lacks essential vitamins and minerals essential to good health and disease prevention. Bopoma Villages taught nutrition and encourages families to grow and eat high-nutrient wholesome food that builds health and immunity to disease.
6. Clean Up
Garbage is an ideal breeding ground for bacteria and insects and attracts animals that carry diseases. Every family can minimize the risk of illness by composting food and animal waste and removing garbage from yards and dwellings and burying it.
7. Dry Your Dishes
Wet dishes are easily recontaminated with bacteria. Dish drying racks allow dishes to dry after washing, expose them to germ-killing sunlight, and keep them out of reach of children and animals. It is a simple intervention with significant health benefits!
