Be a Soapy Hero!

Hand hygiene for better health in schools

The creation of healthy habits during childhood is important to ensure lifelong healthy decisions and actions. It will also help build healthy habits into the future.
Practise good hand hygiene – using soap and water is one of the most important ways to reduce the spread of infectious disease.
Get kids involved with ‘Soapy Hero’ training to help keep classmates, family and friends healthy and stop the spread of dangerous infectious diseases.

Soapy Heroes! Are you ready?

It's time to get soapy and kick Gerry's butt.

I'm Simon.

And I'm Selina. And we're here to take you through your Soapy Hero training!

First you need to know about the baddy. This is Gerry. He's a germ.

He lives in gross places, like coughs, sneezes, boogers, dirt, pets, the toilet, and poo. Yuck!

Gerry is bad because he can make us sick and being sick is boring!

So what do we do when we see Gerry around, Selina?

We wash him off our hands using our Soapy Hero training steps!

Start by wetting your hands with water.

Then rub them with soap until you've sung 'Happy Birthday' twice.

Rinse off all that soap and watch Gerry wash down the drain.

Then dry your hands and your Soapy Hero training is complete.

Staying healthy starts with your hands. Become a Soapy Hero today!

An outbreak of an infectious disease, such as gastro and the flu can significantly impact a school community and make children very sick.

There are a few ways to help your child stay healthy at school:

talk to them about the importance of hand washing
make sure they know how to wash their hands properly – use our ‘Soapy Hero’ resources to help
check if your school provides soap in the student toilets.

WET your hands with water
RUB soap all over your hands for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice
RINSE the soap off your hands
DRY your hands with a clean towel, paper towel or under a hand dryer.

Always wash your hands with soap and running water:

The Department of Education and Training and the Department of Health are working together with schools to help improve hand hygiene and reduce the spread of infectious diseases among primary school children.

Infectious diseases, such as gastro and the flu can spread quickly in the school community.

Schools can reduce teacher and student absences caused by the spread of infectious diseases by: