NEW YORK, NY (June 1, 2012) - Protex®, the trusted antibacterial soap from Colgate-Palmolive, proudly kicked off its annual "Clean Body, Healthy Malaysia" education campaign. In its third consecutive year, the campaign will educate children nationwide about the importance of proper hand washing and how to effectively prevent the spread of bacteria and reduce infection.

The Protex® team will visit 50 primary schools, reaching approximately 50,000 Malaysian school children, to promote proper personal hygiene and the 'seven steps of proper hand washing' recommended by the Ministry of Health. Participating students will be given educational leaflets on proper personal hygiene and samples of Protex® antibacterial soap to share with their families.

"Protex® believes that good personal hygiene habits begin at a young age and continue into adulthood," said John Hazlin, General Manager of Colgate-Palmolive Marketing Sdn Bhd. "This is why we have been focusing on children since the start of the campaign. However, we want to take this one step further this year and have the children share what they've learnt with their friends, siblings, even parents!"

To make the 'seven steps of proper hand washing' more exciting and memorable, Protex® has also launched 'Protex Handwash Starz Search', a creative dance competition for 50 selected schools. Each will submit a two-minute hand washing dance video choreographed to a specially-composed Protex® hand washing song.

The 10 most viewed videos on the Protex® Malaysia YouTube site will be shortlisted and will further be screened by a panel of judges. The five remaining entries will be invited to perform at the grand finale in July 2012, where the five winning schools will be eligible to win a total of almost RM 30,000 towards the improvement of the schools' hygiene facilities.

At the conclusion of this year's "Clean Body, Healthy Malaysia", a total of 255 primary schools and approximately 270,000 school children will be reached since its inception.

Protex® personal hygiene education programs for primary school children began in 2000, culminating in the distribution of hand soaps to all 552,500 Primary One students in all 7,348 Malaysian public primary schools in 2003.

To learn more about Protex®, please visit www.colgate.com.my