New Database Details Over 60 Enabling Technologies for Handwashing

An enabling technology is an external or environmental factor that influences an individual's opportunity to perform a behavior, regardless of their ability and motivation to act. Often overlooked in the design of handwashing initiatives, enabling technologies have been shown to facilitate handwashing behavior in several studies.

The World Bank-administered Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) developed a database to provide practitioners with information on the various types of enabling technologies, including purpose, benefits, key product features and specifications, pictures or illustrations, and contacts for further information.

Washing hands with soap at critical times - after contact with feces and before handling food - could reduce diarrheal rates by up to 47 percent (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003). However, rates of handwashing with soap remain low throughout the developing world and large-scale promotion of handwashing behavior change is a challenge.

For more information on enabling technologies, click here, contact Jacqueline Devine, wsp@worldbank.org , or visit www.wsp.org/scalinguphandwashing.

[The links mentioned above are listed here for technology compatability: Handwashing Database: www.wsp.org/scalinguphandwashing/enablingtechnologies/ , More info. on enabling technologies www.wsp.org/index.cfm?page=page_disp&pid=22074 ]

The Water and Sanitation Program is a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable, safe, and sustainable access to water and sanitation services.