Hand washing: Simple but effective preventive measures

Each hand brings more than 4 million pathogens. Only a clean hand washing action has reduced the possibility of transmission of diarrhea-causing bacteria, causing millions of deaths every year in the world.

On July 25, Vietnam Preventive Medicine Department said that during this summer's 3 months, the number of people who had to be hospitalized continuously increased, some of them were infected from unsanitary street food and habits. accustomed to using unsafe food, not cooked and even from not washing your hands with soap before eating, drinking .

These behaviors further increase the risk of human infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid, SARS, influenza A (H5N1) .

According to the World Health Organization, hand washing is considered a self-made, feasible and cost-effective vaccine and can save millions of lives.

Since then, the Department of Preventive Medicine has identified that infectious diseases that have been and are happening in the community are completely preventable by hygiene, including hand washing with soap. This is a solution that has been proven by scientists to be the most effective, low cost and easy to implement.

(Photo: Library.nhs.uk) Accordingly, only a clean hand washing action reduced the possibility of transmission of bacteria causing diarrhea causing millions of deaths every year in the world. Hand washing may also reduce the risk of diarrhea by 47%, respiratory infections by 19-45%.

Studies show that a person's hand can carry 4.6 million pathogens . Accordingly, bacteria reside on the hands (concentrating large amounts of interstitial and interstitial nails), in particular, regular staphylococcus on the skin surface and in the nasal mucosa of healthy, microscopic people This very dangerous bacterium spreads to others through casual contact.

Many people only recognize bacteria as visible stains. In fact, bacteria always exist in the air, on objects, clothes and especially there are many on the skin of the hand that cannot be seen with the eyes.

Scientists have demonstrated that over 1cm of normal human skin contains up to 40,000 bacteria, on the skin of the hand, the number of bacteria is even more, because the hands are constantly in contact with all things in life.

The familiar behavior of many people like putting their eyes and mouth, holding dirty objects but not washing their hands . accidentally making a bridge to help uninvited guests easily enter the body, causing much dangerous disease. Common diseases such as eye pain, diarrhea, acute respiratory infections . often suffer from poor hygiene.

Kieu Minh