Dubai: Every year two billion people around the world suffer from diarrhoea because they don’t wash their hands, the Global Hygiene Council has warns.
We are living in an inter-connected world where the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, for example, will soon be felt in London, according to John Oxford, chairman of the Hygiene Council and professor of Virology at Queen Mary College, University of London.
Infectious diseases are spread through person-to-person transmission primarily due to a lack of personal hygiene, Oxford says, citing the recent incidents in Germany.
Even in modern, educated societies people do not wash their hands because they claim there is no time, he said.
Oxford was speaking at the recent launch of the Arab Hygiene Council in Dubai that involves health care officials from across the region. Its objective is to develop hygiene standards across the Middle East and raise awareness about the risks of poor hygiene habits.
“Poor hygiene has contributed to the global spread of pathogens such as norovirus and staphylococcus,” Oxford says.
A study has shown that globally, many people still do not wash their hands before cooking their food, eating or after visiting the washroom.
According to Rowena Intrepido, infection control specialist, Canadian Specialist Hospital, Dubai, since the H1Ni scare, more people in the UAE have become aware of the need to keep their hands clean.
“When soap and water are not available, people rely on hand sanitisers,” Intrepido says.
Hospital staff, she says, are required to wash or clean their hands before contact with a patient, after patient contact, after exposure to body and body fluids and after touching the patient’s surroundings.
Some of the dirtiest things we touch every day are the shopping trolley handles and door knobs of toilet doors.
Are hand sanitisers an advertising gimmick? Rowena says it may seem the role of hand sanitisers is over-hyped by manufacturers but our hands are home to thousands of disease-carrying bacteria.
“It is important to maintain hand hygiene with soap and water and if you can’t get soap and water, the hand sanitiser gel will work,” she says.
According to Tareq Madani, professor of medicine and infectious diseases, there is no difference if you wash with soap and water or a sanitising gel. “In a hospital setting, gel and hand wipes are better than soap and water [as they save time],” he says.
But what most important of all, he says, is the method of cleaning your hands. That alone ensures you have cleaned them as is required (see side bar on this page).
