Global Hand-washing Day

Global Hand-washing Day occurs on 15 October of each year. Global Hand-washing Day is dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of hand-washing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives. It is an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times.

Clean Hands Save Lives

Teaching people about handwashing helps them and their communities stay healthy. Handwashing education in the community can reduce the number of people who get sick with diarrhea by about 23-40%, reduces absenteeism due to gastrointestinal illness in schoolchildren by 29-57%, reduce diarrheal illness in people with weakened immune systems by about 58% and reduce respiratory illnesses, like colds, in the general population by about 16-21%.

Bacteria have been known to linger on the hands and other objects for days! This means that if you do not wash your hands expecting the bacteria to die, you might be in for a surprise. They will stay on your hands, or even worse – make their way to your eyes or mouth, causing infections.

Ten million bacteria would fit very comfortably on something as small as the head of a pin?  Given the right conditions, those 10 million bacteria would double every 20 minutes.

Hand washing, when done correctly, is the single most effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Washing your hands is easy, and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of germs. Clean hands can stop germs from spreading from one person to another and throughout an entire community.

Handwashing is one of the best ways to protect yourself and your family from getting sick. You can help yourself and your loved ones stay healthy by washing your hands often.

How Often Should You Wash Your Hands?

There is no daily quota of hand washing that you have to hit in order to stay healthy. It all depends on your environment and what are you doing throughout the day. Wash your hands before, during, and after preparing food, before eating food, before and after caring for someone at home who is sick with vomiting or diarrhea, before and after treating a cut or wound and after using the toilet.

Wash your hands after changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet, after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing, after touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste, after handling pet food or pet treats   and after touching garbage.

5 Steps to Proper Hand-Washing

Follow these five steps every time you wash your hands .Wet your hands with clean water — warm, if available — and apply soap. Lather by rubbing hands together; be sure to cover all surfaces. Continue rubbing hands together for 15 to 20 seconds — sing "Happy Birthday" twice in your head. Thoroughly rinse hands under running water to ensure removal of residual germs. Use paper towels to dry hands and then, if possible, use a paper towel to turn off the faucet.

Hand-washing and Nail Hygiene

Don’t forget to pay extra care to washing underneath your nails. Those that are prone to nail biting may suffer from many unpleasant consequences. Appropriate hand hygiene includes diligently cleaning and trimming fingernails, which may harbor dirt and germs and can contribute to the spread of some infections, such as pin-worms.

Fingernails should be kept short, and the undersides should be cleaned frequently with soap and water. Because of their length, longer fingernails can harbor more dirt and bacteria than short nails, thus potentially contributing to the spread of infection.

Dry your hands thoroughly. This minimizes the likelihood a nail infection will occur and prevents water from softening the nails too much.

Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizers 

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to get rid of germs in most situations. You can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol if soap and water are not available. Sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in many situations. However, Sanitizers do not get rid of all types of germs. Hand sanitizers may not be as effective when hands are visibly dirty or greasy. Hand sanitizers might not remove harmful chemicals from hands like pesticides and heavy metals.

If you're using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, apply product to one palm, rub your two hands together, making sure to reach all surfaces, and continue rubbing until hands are dry. This should take around 20 seconds.

Hand-washing and Food Hygiene

Hand washing is vital in preventing contamination of food by food handlers. Handwashing in the food industry is one of the first lines of defense in food safety. Harmful bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus and viruses present on the hands of food workers are removed by proper hand washing techniques.

Hand-washing with soap is an important part of food hygiene, a set of hygienic practices that keep food safe and prevent food-related illnesses. Contamination of food can lead to a wide range of illnesses and outbreaks, many of which are particularly dangerous for pregnant women, fetuses, and people with compromised immune systems. Up to 70 percent of cases of diarrhea may be associated with poor food hygiene.

Hand-washing and Nutrition 

Hygiene is important for improving nutrition but is not a stand-alone solution. Improving handwashing with soap is considered a nutrition-sensitive intervention.

Hand-washing prevents diarrhea diseases, which not only contribute to the deaths of many children under five but limit the body’s ability to absorb nutrition from food. Hand-washing breaks the vicious cycle of diarrhea and under nutrition.

Children are susceptible to infection by bacteria and viruses, found in fecal matter, that cause diarrhea. When children get diarrhea, they often eat less food, and have a reduced ability to absorb and benefit from nutrients in the food they do eat. As a result, this can contribute to under-nutrition. When children are undernourished, they become far more susceptible to developing diarrhea when they come into contact with the bacteria and viruses in fecal matter. And so, the cycle repeats itself. Good hand-washing with soap can prevent nearly half of all cases of childhood diarrhea.

Drinking clean water and hand-washing with soap can prevent the loss of nutrients through diarrhea and reduce stunting by up to 15% in children under the age of 5, giving them a better chance of maintaining good nutrition and growing up to thrive.

The negative effects of under-nutrition during the first 1,000 days on physical growth, immune system and brain development may be irreversible. Poor hygiene is also linked to wasting and severe acute malnutrition.

Want to 'Reset' your Brain? Wash your Hands.

There are many health reasons to wash your hands, but it can also have psychological effects. Specifically, it may lessen guilty feelings or remorse over past actions—or at least serve as an attempt to do so. In the mind, dirt is associated with guilt, so theoretically washing doesn’t just remove dirt, it also removes a guilty feeling. Those who washed their hands after thinking about an immoral behavior felt less guilty. It seems when you wash your hands in a public toilet, you help guilt other people into washing theirs as well. Not only are you staying healthy, you’re also doing a public service by shaming others into following suit.

Even using a hand wipe to wipe away dirt can improve your way of thinking. Washing your hands does not just keep them clean, but the act can also cleanse your brain of old ideas. Washing your hands can shift goal pursuit, making prior goals less important and subsequent goals more important.

Feeling clean directly affects our view of other people. When people in one study washed their hands, they were more disgusted by the bad behavior of others.

Want to feel more optimistic? Wash your hands. Washing your hands can wash away the feeling of failure and can help boost optimism after a failure.