Today is Global Handingwashing Day 2024 with the theme reflecting an important question, “Why are clean hands still important?”
While considerable progress in hand hygiene awareness has been made, maintaining and improving hand hygiene behaviours remains crucial beyond public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Clean hands remain a fundamental defence against the spread of diseases including gastrointestinal infections, such as salmonellosis, and respiratory infections, such as influenza, colds and coronavirus.
Whether in hospitals, schools, or in everyday interactions, practicing handwashing with soap contributes to better health outcomes and a safer world for everyone. Some forms of gastrointestinal and respiratory infections can cause serious complications, especially for young children, the elderly, or those with a weakened immune system.
The benefits of clean hands
Hand hygiene, whether through handwashing with soap or alcohol-based handrub, can help reduce the transmission of a range of diseases:
- Handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhoea diseases by 30%.
- Handwashing with soap can reduce acute respiratory infections by up to 20%.
- Hand hygiene is protective against healthcare-associated infections and contributes to reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Benefits beyond disease reduction
Proper hand hygiene has also been linked to benefits beyond disease reduction, such as reduced rates of school absenteeism, reduced numbers of employee sick days and improvements in wellbeing, dignity, and productivity.
When to wash your hands
You should wash your hands thoroughly:
- after using the toilet
- after changing nappies
- before, during and after preparing food
- between handling raw and cooked or ready-to-eat food
- before eating
- after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
- after using a tissue or handkerchief
- before and after attending to sick children or other family members
- after smoking
- after handling rubbish or working in the garden
- after handling animals
- when you get home, arrive at other people’s homes, at venues or at work.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands. If you feel a cough or sneeze is coming on, make sure to cough or sneeze into a tissue and then throw it away and wash your hands.
If you do not have a tissue, cough or sneeze into your elbow. It’s a part of your body less likely to touch other surfaces and will help stop the spread of nasty germs.
Use running water
Use running water instead of a basin of standing water that could become contaminated through use. Warm water may be better than cold for handwashing as soap lathers (soaps up) better with warm water. However, cold water and soap are still suitable.
Soap is important
Washing hands with soap and water will remove substantially more disease-causing organisms than washing hands with water alone.
For people who find that soap causes skin irritation, it is useful to note that soaps can have a different pH – they may be neutral, slightly alkaline or slightly acidic, and perfumes in soap may also cause irritation. Changing soap may help some people.
Liquid soap is best
Generally, it is better to use liquid soap than bar soap, particularly at work. However, bar soap is better than no soap.
Dry your hands
Hands spread more germs when they are damp than when they are dry! And because the transmission of bacteria is more likely to occur from wet skin than from dry skin, drying of hands is an essential component to good hand hygiene to avoid sickness and infection.
Looking to improve hand hygiene in your own organisation? Whatever your hand hygiene needs are for your business, at TWC Facilities we will have a solution. Find out more by calling our friendly team on 0330 441 0985 or email customercare@twc-facilities.com
