• April 20, 2024

Handwashing with soap is one of the most effective and economical ways to prevent diseases, such as diarrhea and pneumonia, which together are responsible for more than 3.5 million infant deaths, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) . 

However, despite the life-saving potential of handwashing with soap, it is rarely practiced and it is not always easy to promote it.

Therefore, WHO recommends doing so before eating and after using the toilet, which could save more lives than any vaccine or medical intervention, reduce diarrhea deaths by almost half and prevent a quarter of deaths from acute respiratory infections. .

Benefits of hand washing with soap

It is worth mentioning that although a good part of the population worldwide carries out hand washing, a high percentage does not use soap or another supplement that helps make it an effective practice, which could allow:

1. The critical times to wash your hands with soap are after using the bathroom or cleaning a child's stool and before handling food.

2. When people do not use soap to wash their hands that have been in contact with human or animal feces, with fluids such as nasal secretions and contaminated food or water, they can transmit bacteria, viruses and parasites to various hosts.

3. Handwashing with soap is also a formidable ally in efforts to combat hosts of other diseases, such as helminths (worms).

4. It helps reduce the risk of eye infections, such as trachoma, and skin infections such as impetigo.

5. The most common infections, often caused by germs resistant to drugs, are those of the urinary tract, which are contracted in a hospital, health center or operating room, in addition to pneumonia and bloodstream infections. So wash your hands can reduce the risk up to 51% among workers in these places.

In addition, the WHO emphasizes that the use of soap gives an additional value to the time it is used to wash hands, since it removes the grease and dirt that most germs contain by facilitating washing and rubbing, and leaves hands with a pleasant smell, which creates an incentive for its use.

In this sense, in the Hand washing world day, It is important to make known this simple but very effective way to save many lives.

Video Medicine: Benefits of handwashing with soap (April 2024).