The award for Best television Advert of the Year 2003 was presented to Nana Garbrah-Aidoo, the programme coordinator, and the rest of the PPPHW team, for their advert OBAATANPA (Hohoro Wo Nsa - Good Mother, Wash Your Hands). This advert represents part of a communications campaign which uses TV, Radio, street theatre, women's groups, schools and antenatal clinics to promote the practice of hand washing with soap throughout Ghana. Beth Scott and Val Curtis from the Hygiene Centre are advisors to the project, which aims to get governments, development agencies, organisations and industry to combine their resources and expertise to work together, to reduce the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases in poor communities through hand washing with soap.

"Hand washing with soap after contact with faeces and before touching food is a life saver: in fact it could save over a million lives in developing countries," said Val Curtis, director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Hand washing can prevent 40-50 per cent of diarrhoea and 30 per cent of respiratory infections, the two biggest child killers in the world today.

The private sector, Unilever, PZ-Cussons and Getrade, a local Ghanaian soap manufacturer, participate in the programme; sharing marketing expertise and providing resources and soap, whilst at the same time increasing their soap sales.

The award was presented at the National Marketing Performance Awards held at the State House, Accra, on June 6, 2004 where it was received by Ms Garbrah-Aidoo, alongside representatives from partners including the World Bank, the Community Water and Sanitation Agency and representatives from the leading creative agency, Lintas Ghana, and private sector partners PZ-Cussons and Unilever.

In presenting the award, CIMG stated to the team, " Your efforts at creating health consciousness through everyday living with the confluence of exemplary setting and a simple message is unrivalled. Your simple, informative and educative message has gone down well with the audience and impacted on millions of viewers in both the city and rural dwellers."

Ms Garbrah-Aidoo praised the involvement of all those in the partnership and made a promise to do even better in Phase II of the campaign, scheduled to begin early in 2005.