The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : None can wash hands of it

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 11, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

None can wash hands of it

Ramya Kannan

Proper handwashing can avoid a host of diseases

“Hands should be washed up to elbow with soap, preferably using a soft brush at the nail ends”
“Nail biters always carry infections in their intestinal tract and mouth”

CHENNAI: ‘Wash your hands’ seems like a facile thing to say, but if truth be told, the simple act is your best guard against a whole range of infections, some of them fatal.

It is over a month since the world celebrated the first-ever Global Handwashing Day. But in Chennai city, ravaged by rain, where all factors that cause water-borne disease epidemics are present, public health experts warn that the lessons of October are all the more valid now. Doctors also say if diarrhoeal infection spreads rapidly among 41 persons at the Institute of Mental Health recently, one factor could also be improper handwash.

Proper handwashing can help a person avoid a whole-range of diseases that are transmitted by contaminated handling. The more prominent among these include diarrhoeal diseases, but they can also include potentially life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, rheumatic heart disease among children, food poisoning, skin infections, amoebiasis, and helminthic infections (caused by parasitic worms).

The Global Handwashing Day campaign was jointly launched by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP/World Bank), UNICEF, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USAID through the Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP), Procter and Gamble and Unilever.

There is scientific evidence to show handwashing with soap to be an exceptionally efficacious and cost-effective health intervention. According to information on the campaign’s website ( www.globalhandwashingday.org) “the challenge is to transform handwashing with soap from an abstract good idea into an automatic behaviour performed in homes, schools, and communities worldwide.”

It could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhoea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.

S.Elango, Director of Public Health, says the importance of washing hands cannot be overstated. “ Major diseases are being transmitted through use of hands. It is very important to wash hands with soap many times a day, but without fail, immediately after using the toilet and before consuming food,” he explains. Surveys commissioned by the public health directorate and the school education department show that the handwashing habit has few loyalists among students. “This was the case even in the elite schools. And if we need to inculcate handwashing as a habit, it is best to start at schools,” Dr. Elango explains.

Public health expert P.Kuganantham says according to the WHO, a person must wash his or her hands at least 20 times a day. In developing countries, the recommendation is a minimum of 15 times a day. He explains the handwashing protocol: Hands should be washed up to the elbow with soap, preferably using a soft brush at the nail ends. “Lakhs of germs gather in the nails and are likely to contaminate the food. We, as a nation, have to pay more importance to handwashing because we eat with our fingers, putting food into our mouth with our hands,” he says. Oral-faeco contamination is one of the main causes of infectious disease.

But it is not just your unclean hands that will do the damage for you. Food handlers are also a potential source of infection. Dr. Elango also stresses the importance of trimming one’s nails. Nails can apparently harbour millions of disease causing micro-organisms. “Nail biters always carry infections in their intestinal tract and mouth. We have to teach children the importance of not biting nails and washing their hands appropriately,” Dr. Kuganantham adds.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu