Haath Mein Sehat (HMS), Hindi for “Health in Hands,” is a student organization at UC Berkeley that has worked to address water, sanitation, and hygiene issues in urban slums in Mumbain and Hubli, India since 2004. Moving forward, HMS will concentrate its efforts on hand hygiene among children as a way to tackle diarrheal disease and respiratory infection—two leading causes of childhood malnutrition and mortality in India. In doing so, HMS will positively impact household livelihoods by easing the economic burden (i.e. expense of money, time, and effort) often associated with taking care of chronically ill children.
