Education and hygiene

Photo: Shafiqul Islam Kajol / driknews

It is a matter of great concern and regret that as a nation our consciousness regarding hygiene is very poor. You'll find people doing all sorts of things that are considered unacceptable according to the norms of social and personal hygiene. It comes as no surprise that we often get to see outbreaks of diarrhoea, typhoid and other diseases that can easily be prevented if we become a bit more knowledgeable on how these diseases are caused and how these spread.
I think we can blame our education system for its lack of initiative in imparting such important education on life to the masses. While studying for my GCE O level Biology, I came to learn the importance of maintaining personal hygiene, there I've read about pathogens and some diseases with social importance (which causes great loss to society in terms of both lives and wealth and most importantly these are very much preventable). I got to learn how they are caused and how these spread among the masses. It helped me become more aware and hence more responsible towards society. Recently, I had the opportunity to go through the Biology books of SSC and HSC respectively, but I found little information regarding the importance of maintaining personal hygiene and such diseases. I found most of the contents of these books hold little value if you want to learn something that you might find useful in your life, unless you're interested in how the digestive track of a frog looks like and how many layers of cuticle a cockroach has. This is another issue I'd probably write about sometime later.
I'd like to draw the attention of the decision makers to include a section in the schoolbooks on the importance of maintaining personal hygiene and the socially important diseases from class five up to class eight.