Word on Health was horrified to learn that when you meet someone and shake their hand, there’s a one in five chance that they didn’t wash their hands after going to the toilet.
A recent study of 2,000 adults found that more than half did not clean up before eating and even more worryingly, 3:1 men and almost 1:5 women said they also often failed to wash their hands after going to the toilet.
Of those, almost a quarter said they were not worried about hygiene after using their toilet at home because they would only be picking up germs from other members of their family, while one in five said their hands already looked clean without the need to wash them under a tap.
Although 88% of those questioned could correctly name at least one food bacterium such as salmonella, E. coli or campylobacter, many did not realize how easy they were to pick up.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and leading public health officials, hand washing is the single most important method of preventing the spread of infection.
Perhaps it’s because hand washing is so basic that it’s often taken for granted. Yet the quantity and variety of germs that we carry on our hands everyday is astounding. Each square inch of our skin contains about 5,000 different bacteria. When we forget to wash our hands, or don’t wash our hands correctly, we can spread these germs to other people.
“The importance of hand washing cannot be overstressed. It is so simple and yet forgetting to do it can have such serious consequences.” says Sir John Krebs, chairman of the UK’s Food Standards Agency.
And it’s not just children or the general public that forget to wash their hands, seems health workers are just as guilty. In the US it is estimated that hand washing alone could prevent 20,000 patient deaths per year. Despite this, studies have shown that hand washing compliance among health-care workers is poor.
Things, it seems, are so bad that Loyola University Health System has just hosted a forum led by hand-hygiene authority Professor Didier Pittet, MD, MS, and President of The Joint Commission Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP MPP, MPH.
This forum was designed to educate healthcare leaders about proper hand washing techniques as well as provide strategies to overcome challenges to achieving a highly effective hand-hygiene program.
For those of you who missed the forum, SRxA’s word on Health is pleased to bring you some simple hand hygiene tips:
Always wash your hands before:
- Preparing food
- Eating
- Treating wounds or giving medicine
- Touching a sick or injured person
- Inserting or removing contact lenses
Always wash your hands after:
- Preparing food, especially raw meat or poultry
- Using the toilet
- Changing a diaper
- Touching an animal or animal toys, leashes or waste
- Blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing into your hands
- Treating wounds
- Touching a sick or injured person
- Handling garbage or something that could be contaminated, such as a cleaning cloth or soiled shoes
Of course, it’s also important to wash your hands whenever they look dirty…or before you come to shake one of ours!
For more on hand hygiene we suggest you check out the CDC’s Clean hands save lives site.
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