Global Handwashing Day on Wednesday

The first-ever Global Handwashing Day will take place on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. The UN General Assembly has designated 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, and Global Handwashing Day will echo and reinforce its call for improved hygiene practices. Global Handwashing Day will be the centerpiece of a week of activities that will mobilize millions of people in more than 20 countries across five continents to wash their hands with soap.

Excerpts from WHO publication:

Handwashing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrheal iseases and pneumonia, which together are responsible for the majority of child deaths. Every year, more than 3.5 million children do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday because of diarrhea and pneumonia. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practiced and not always easy to promote. The challenge is to transform handwashing with soap from an abstract good idea into an automatic behavior performed in homes, schools, and communities worldwide. Turning handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.

Handwashing with soap works by interrupting the transmission of disease. Hands often act as vectors that carry disease-causing pathogens from person to person, either through direct contact or indirectly via surfaces. When not washed with soap, hands that have been in contact with human or animal feces, bodily fluids like nasal excretions, and contaminated foods or water can transport bacteria, viruses and parasites to unwitting hosts

What are the benefits of handwashing with soap?

Diarrheal diseases and pneumonia together kill almost 4 million children under the age of five in developing countries each year. Children from the poorest 20 percent of households are more than 10 times as likely to die as children from the richest 20 percent of households. Hands are the principal carriers of disease-causing germs, and handwashing with soap could avert million of those deaths. Washing hands with soap after using the toilet or cleaning a child and before handling food can reduce rates of diarrheal disease by nearly one-half and rates of respiratory infection by about one-quarter. Handwashing can also prevent skin infections, eye infections, intestinal worms, SARS and Avian Flu, and benefits the health of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Why isn't it enough to wash with water alone?

Washing hands with water alone, a more common practice, is significantly less effective than washing hands with soap. Using soap adds to the time spent washing, breaks down the grease and dirt that carry most germs by facilitating the rubbing and friction that dislodge them and leaves hands smelling pleasant. The clean smell and feeling that soap creates is an incentive for its use.

Once people understand the health benefits of handwashing, won't they automatically do it?

No. Human beings the world over fail to do things they should do. If they did, everyone would maintain a healthy weight, no one would smoke or drink to excess and all of us would rise at dawn for an hour of cardiovascular exercise.