Innovative method to teach tots about personal cleanliness

Some of the practices in the pre-schools and kindergartens, such as the use of communal cups and common towels, indicated the need for education on disease transmission. Many of the educators lacked knowledge of how illness can be transferred. "We mostly wanted to get the message through to the educators," says Dr. Rosen. "The teachers had a really important role ― whether the kids were washing their hands or not depended on the teachers," who needed to provide an example for their charges.

To change the teachers' behavior, Dr. Rosen and her fellow researchers used a multi-pronged approach that focused on the children as well. "You need to work on attitude," she explains. "We ran seminars for teachers and taught them about the transmission of diseases."

		IMAGE: This is the "Get Rid of Germs " game developed by Tel Aviv University researchers. Click here for more information.

The next step for Dr. Rosen was to give the schools the tools they needed to put the theory into practice. "It was essential to give teachers the tools to change their students' behaviour," she said. "Some places didn't even have soap. If you have a population that knows how important it is to wash hands, but doesn't have soap, they aren't in a very good situation. We also wanted to cut back on the sharing of cups, so we gave them individual cups."