Soap and Water

A minister was asked to dinner by one of his church members. He knew she was a bad housekeeper but agreed. When he sat down at the table, he noticed that the dishes were the dirtiest that he had ever seen in his life. "Were these dishes ever washed?" he asked his hostess, running his fingers over the grit and grime.

She replied, "They're as clean as soap and water could get them". He felt a bit uncomfortable, but blessed the food anyway and started eating. It was really delicious and he said so, despite the dirty dishes. When dinner was over, the hostess took the dishes outside and yelled, "Here Soap! Here Water!"

The joke is as corny as succotash, but it may draw attention to Global Handwashing Day celebrated this year on 15 October that will provide an opportunity to motivate and mobilize millions around the world to wash their hands with soap. Global Handwashing Day is an initiative of the Public Private Partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW). More information about the Day can be found on their website at http://www.globalhandwashing.org/.

“Handwashing with soap may be an old idea, but it is far from universally practiced. Combining the expertise and resources of the soap industry with the facilities and resources of governments to promote handwashing with soap is one obvious solution. Whilst governments and development agencies want to combat disease and poverty, industry is interested in expanding its market.

Handwashing plays an important part in the efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals related both to: (1) health improvements, and (2) access and effective use of water supply and sanitation services, two of the five major goals agreed to by UN member countries at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002.”

The idea is to get private industry and the public sector to work together with other partners to develop programs to promote handwashing. The non-branded programs are open to all interested parties, both public and private, targeting those most at risk (mothers, children, the poor) across the whole population. Based on detailed consumer studies, these programs reach out to target audiences through mass media, direct consumer contact and government channels of communication.

In addition to the health costs, the lack of adequate sanitation facilities in schools also has an impact on access to education, with girl’s school attendance often falling off when they reach puberty where school sanitation facilities are inadequate.

Access to clean water and sanitation are fundamental to every aspect of children’s lives– including their health, their survival and their dignity – and providing all children with clean drinking water and improved sanitation and hygiene in schools would make an important contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The announcement of Global Handwashing Day was made at the annual World Water Week 2008, which was held in Stockholm from August 17 to 23.

This year’s theme; Progress and Prospects on Water: For a Clean and Healthy World included a special focus on sanitation and hygiene. 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation (IYS).

• UNICEF and partners announce Global Handwashing Day 2008

Over 170 collaborating organizations met to discuss issues around water and its impact on health, the environment, and poverty alleviation, at the annual World Water Week  held in Stockholm last August  

This year's theme; Progress and Prospects on Water: For a Clean and Healthy World includes a special focus on sanitation and hygiene. 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation (IYS).

UNICEF convened two seminars during the World Water Week, (i) The impact of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions on children, and (ii) The importance of water, sanitation and hygiene in schools.

Children are among the most vulnerable to the consequences of the lack of access to clean water improved sanitation and hygiene. More than 5,000 children under five die every day as a result of diarrheal diseases, caused in part by unsafe water, lack of access to basic sanitation facilities and improved hygiene. Simple behavioral changes, such as hand washing with soap, can help reduce mortality rates related to diarrheal diseases by almost 50 per cent.

Is this relevant to Pinoyland? You bet! An article in a leading daily reports: RP second largest contributor to diarrhea-related deaths

“The Philippines is second to China as the biggest contributor to the number of diarrhea-related deaths in the world… The Philippine figure is almost double that of other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Korea.

The Unicef embarked yesterday on a worldwide campaign to promote the “life-saving habit” of handwashing with soap to prevent illnesses like diarrhea, considered the second leading killer of children below five years old.

Unicef country representative Vanessa Tobin said while people wash their hands with water, “far fewer wash their hands with soap at critical moments – for example, after using the toilet, after cleaning a child and before handling food.”

“They don’t realize that hand-washing is actually a life-saving habit that can prevent the deaths of millions of children,” Tobin said during the launch of the 1st Global Handwashing Day at the Museo Pambata in Manila.” Read more ...

Twenty countries worldwide, including the Philippines, will go on an all-day hand washing event on October 15 to teach the public, especially children, the importance of regularly cleaning hands. The project will be launched following studies that non-washing of hands leads to several fatal diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia, among others. World Health Organization statistics show that every year, diarrhea kills some two million children worldwide while in the Philippines alone, there are 1.5 million diarrhea cases leading to the deaths of at least 10,000 children.

Aside from this, about 10 percent of children below five years old carry symptoms of acute respiratory infections while 70 percent of pre-schoolers are host to at least a type of intestinal worm. However, officials said the number could be easily lowered if only children would be able to do the easy hygiene habit.

“Proper handwashing should be started at home. We must educate our children even at their young age the importance of handwashing,” said Dr. Yolanda Oliveros, Department of Health spokesman. But Oliveros acknowledged that many children were not able to wash their hands regularly due to lack of access to basic sanitation, with statistics pegged at almost 60 percent of observed handwashing respondents not being able to wash hands during the critical moments.

In public schools, our problem is lack of funds to build classrooms, and when they are funded no toilet facilities are included. Even when provided with toilets, running water is not available at times. But running water often floods urban areas, mercifully causing cancellation of classes

Desperate Patients

Filipino-Americans are up in arms against a popular soap opera over the racist quote of the character of Susan Mayer (played by Teri Hatcher) in the hit series in the U.S. “Desperate Housewives”. In the premiere episode of its fourth season, Mayer asked for the credentials of the gynecologist who examined her and told her that she was approaching menopause. She said, “Can I check those diplomas ‘coz I just want to make sure that they’re not from some med school in the Philippines.” The episode posted on YouTube.com drew criticisms from the Filipino community on the Internet. Angry Filipino-Americans said they have written the show’s producer objecting to the “racist slur and demanding an apology.

Do American sitcoms shoot scenes extemporaneously and are script less ala Pinoy style? More likely the script dialogue was deliberate and specific. I strongly smell something fishy as the timing coincides with Congressional deliberations on the cheaper medicines legislation. The seedy reputation of Big Pharma raises suspicions, coming in the wake of the recent controversy between the Department of Health (DOH) and the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) on breastfeeding, and their atrocious pricing policy.

One of the oligarchs of America alongside the Military and the Federal Government is Big Pharma, a component of Big Business. Holding a vital function in Big Pharma is the propaganda machine called Public Relations or PR with the primary mission to furbish the company image. Common PR practices are the (1) Astroturf referring to grassroots citizen groups funded by corporations or public relations firms, (2) Corporate sponsored front groups created or used by PR firms to appear as "independent" third parties, and (3) third party technique which has been defined by one PR executive as, "put your words in someone else's mouth.”, putting their words in the mouths of journalists by hiring reporters to write stories which favor their clients, or by funding tendentious university research which they then publicize as "proof" of their client's position.

The third method was apparently chosen with studied precision - a highly popular sitcom for maximum effect and a likeable spokesperson, Teri Hatcher, who exuded lingering heroine features from her previous role as Lois Lane of Superman fame. The allusion to mistrust of Philippine medical facilities is deserved following the hubbub of the Nursing exam leak and cheating abetted by the mishandling of the licensure by the Professional Regulatory Commission. And to top it all, the PR spin shows arrogant contempt for a corrupt regime. Funded with a bruited war chest of $1 billion, placing pejorative words in Hatcher’s mouth is no big deal

The Hatcher episode is just the first salvo of Big Pharma aiming to sink the cheaper medicine vehicle. The PR spin is expected to intensify and will not remain clean and mild, the stakes being extremely high.

Update

Others view the “DH” incident from an acute angle, that it's good to find an issue around which Fil-Americans and Filipinos could get over their differences and finally unite (fractious Pinoys naturally disagree), but also pokes fun at onion-skin Pinoy sensitivity citing the sardonic racist humor of the soap has spattered other minority groups: taunted Latinos (larcenous, randy and hypocritically Catholic), African-Americans (criminal-minded), and Chinese (ignorant but grasping). Another says the producers are elated by the goaded attention, deserved or not, to boost waning interest. Racist brickbats have not been one sided.

Wasp Jokes

After successive waves of ethnic jokes it was inevitable that the harassed minorities would retaliate. A clever and anonymous cartel of these groups pooled its creative talents to produce the last word in ethnic humor: WASP jokes. Like its irreverent forebears, the WASP joke (the acronym signifies “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) pokes fun at the peculiarities ─ real and imagined ─ that characterize the WASP. These would include the innate predilection toward big business:

Q ─ What do you call six WASPs sitting around a conference table?

A ─ Price fixing.

Q ─ What is the WASP version of the Holy Trinity?

A ─ General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. (Note: Pinoy version is Caltex, Petron and Shell)

Q ─ What do you get when you cross a WASP with a chimpanzee?

A ─ A three-feet-high blond company president.

Q ─ (On his reading habits): How do you keep a WASP uninformed?

A ─ Hide his copy of Reader’s Digest

Q ─ How do you keep him misinformed?

A ─ Find it for him.

Q ─ How do you tell a WASP at a nude party?

A ─ He’s the one reading The Wall Street Journal

Q ─ (On his politics): What does a WASP consider the chief injustice in the world?

A ─ (Chief Justice) Earl Warren.

Q ─ Name a WASP war hero.

A ─ General Franco.

Q ─ What is the WASPs favorite tree?

A ─ Birch.

Q ─ Why do WASPs fear sunburn?

A ─ Better dead than red.

His putative narrow-mindedness is a rich vein:

Q ─ What do you call 144 WASPs?

A ─ Gross bigotry.

Q ─ What do you call a WASP in Alabama with a Jewish name?

A ─ Lonely

Q ─ Why do WASPs prefer to belong to private country clubs?

A ─ It’s their final solution to the Jewish Problem.

And his lack of love for his Negro brethren is a veritable mother lode:

Q ─ What do you call a WASP with a Negro roommate?

A ─ A jailbird.

Q ─ What is the WASP version of black power?

A ─ 50 Negroes pulling a barge up the Mississippi.

Q ─ Name the two Negroes whom WASPs most admire.

A ─ Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

Q ─ What is an Alabama WASP’s version of The Late Show?

A ─ A jury taking more than five minutes to find a Negro guilty.

Q ─ What do you call a WASP who has a Negro for dinner?

A ─ A cannibal.

Q ─ What’s a WASP dove in Alabama?

A ─ Someone who calls for a halt to the bombing of Negro churches.

Q ─ What do you call a Mississippi WASP who participates in a lynching?

A ─ A social climber.

The WASP’s physical frailty is also fair game:

Q ─ How many WASPs does it take to convict a Southern Negro of simple assault?

A ─ 24: 12 to beat him up and another 12 to find him guilty.

Q ─ What do you call a WASP prize fighter?

A ─ Lousy.

So is his religion:

Q ─ How can you tell a WASP prostitute?

A ─ There’s a Bible next to her bed.

Q ─ What do you call it when a prostitute services a WASP client?

A ─ The naked and the dead.

Q ─ What happens when a WASP couple get to know each other well?

A ─ Divorce.

Racial Bias

Why are some individuals not prejudiced? Two University professors conducted a study to investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one's own group. What is remarkable about the findings is that only seven percent did not show any racial bias (as measured by implicit and explicit psychological tests), and that nonbiased individuals differed from biased individuals in a psychologically fundamental way -- they were less likely to form negative affective associations in general.

The authors argue that although negative affect cannot be reduced by reason alone, it could be reconditioned through positive interpersonal experiences or exposure to more positive images of ethnics in the media.