A Social Robot Encourages Children in India to Wash Their Hands

According to the WHO, hand hygiene saves millions of lives every year when done at the right time during healthcare. The World Day of Hand Hygiene was established by the organization and is celebrated on May 5th of each year. Dr. Amol Deshmukh is researching how children can be encouraged to wash their hands with the help of social robots. He presented his findings at the ICSR in Qatar in December 2023. The paper by him and his co-authors is entitled „Enhancing Hand Hygiene Practices Through a Social Robot-Assisted Intervention in a Rural School in India“. From the abstract: „This paper discusses pilot deployment of a social robot ‚WallBo‘ that investigated the effectiveness in promoting and encouraging handwashing practices among children in a rural school in India. The results suggest an overall 85.06% handwashing compliance, 51.60% improvement from the baseline handwashing compliance and an overall ~ 50% knowledge improvement about handwashing. We also present students’ perception about ‚WallBo‘ and feedback from the pupils and teachers.“ (Abstract) The chapter in the proceedings is available via link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-8715-3_21.

Fig.: Dr. Amol Deshmukh during his presentation at Qatar University