World Hand Hygiene Day: A practice that keeps everyone safe

Pune: Medical experts stress that washing hands regularly can control not just the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but also help in maintaining good hygiene.

Speaking on the issue, Dr KK Aggarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India (HCFI) and editor of Medtalks, said that proper hand hygiene and sanitation are ways of harm reduction in children and adults alike.

“Regular handwashing with soap and water is a simple, economical and one of the most effective strategies to prevent the outbreak of any communicable disease. Good handwashing can prevent infections like diarrhoea, Hepatitis A and E and respiratory infections including COVID-19,” said Dr Aggarwal.

He gave the example of the Ebola outbreak in Africa. “They mandated frequent handwashing in schools and other places for everyone, which helped to bring down the number of cases. A similar approach is needed in India,” said Dr Aggarwal.

Vikas Bagaria, the founder of Pee Safe, a company of personal hygiene products, said that lack of hand hygiene is one of the major reasons for the spread of several communicable diseases globally.

He added that good hygiene and sanitation are part of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

“While the proper handwashing technique is a vital part of staying healthy and free of diseases, soap and water may not always be around. This is where a good quality, alcohol-based based sanitiser can help and can be carried around even during travel,” said Bagaria.

Dr Rajendra Patankar, CEO, Jupiter Hospital, Pune highlighted that the focus of global hand hygiene day is on the importance of good hand hygiene practices one should inculcate.

“Good hand hygiene reduces the risk of infections like flu, coronavirus, food and waterborne infection and healthcare-associated infections being passed from person to person. Use soap, water, hand sanitiser as soon as you get home from buying the groceries or into work, also after blowing your nose, sneezing or coughing, and eating or handling food. It is vital that we all remember to keep washing our hands and to do so for at least one minute,” said Dr Patankar. 

HUNGARIAN INITIATIVE
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people are washing their hands every 20 minutes to keep the virus at bay. But way back in 19th century it was a Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who is arguably the first person to introduce handwashing with water and soap as a means to reduce the number of deaths drastically.

A city-based researcher (who doesn’t want to be named) said, “In the 1840s many women would die after childbirth. No one could find the exact cause until Ignaz, the director of the maternity clinic at Vienna General Hospital in Austria, figured out the problem.”

The researcher added that handwashing was not followed then, and thus the risk of spreading infection was very high. The newborn would die because of puerperal or childbed fever as doctors would move on from dissecting corpses to examining new mothers without washing their hands. After Ignaz implemented the handwashing rules, the deaths drastically decreased, and he was known as ‘saviour of the mothers’.