Up to a million microbes could have touched your child's lunch before they do! Whilst you – and they – think that they're tucking into a healthy meal of roti and sabzi or daal and rice, chances are that they're also likely to be swallowing germs that have the potential to make them sick, if they haven't washed their hands with soap first.

A million microbes reach our children's hands every day – from their journey to school, the hands of their classmates, their books and desks in the classroom, the toilet. Though their little hands might look perfectly clean, they are likely to be squirming with someone else's germs by the time they sit down for lunch.

Hands are the principal carriers of disease-causing and potentially life-threatening germs, causing diarrhoea, pneumonia, cholera and dysentery. But a simple hygiene habit – washing hands with soap after the toilet and before lunch – will help make sure these germs don't enter your child's body.

Global Hand-washing Day on October 15 is a platform to create a global culture of washing hands with soap. Lifebuoy, in partnership with the coalition, will be launching the inaugural Global Hand Wash Day in India on October 15 even as 20 other countries across five continents do the same across the world.

Every year, millions of children across the world don't live to celebrate their fifth birthday. The objective of establishing Global Hand-washing Day is to control communicable fatal diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia, a release issued here stated. Vision on Global Handwashing Day is to foster global and local culture of handwashing with soap, which is also the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia.