Wash up on National Hand Washing Week

Hand washing is the single most important means to prevent the spread of infection. An estimated 36,000 people die from the flu or flu-like illness each year and 5,000 people die from food borne illness each year. Approximately 164,000,000 days are lost from school due to illness, of which 22,000,000 are due to the common cold alone.

Furthermore, there are 2 million patients who contract hospital acquired infections (HAI) of 33 million hospital admissions annually. Between 78,000 and 90,000 patients die each year from (HAI), for which a direct link to many of these deaths is poor hand washing. There are 76 million food borne illnesses each year resulting in more than 300,000 hospital admissions.

Hand Washing and Hand Awareness is important for infection prevention, food safety, school health, personal health and disease prevention.

There are many critical times to wash your hands. A few examples are before eating, after the toilet, during food preparation, after handling animals, upon arriving home, after changing diapers, leaving the hospital or physician?s office and any time you think your hands are dirty.

Use soap, running water, and scrub all surfaces of your hands for 20 seconds and dry with a paper towel.

Warren County TNCEP, school nurses and teachers will be celebrating National Hand Washing Awareness Week at the schools by encouraging their students to wash their hands before meals and as often as needed to help keep down the spread of bacteria and germs among the student body. National Hand Washing Week activities will be the initial step of many scheduled classroom activities. School nurses and teaching staff will be scheduling proper hand washing trainings and presentations using the hand washing glit kit, hold poster contest and provide numerous interactive activities for the student through out the upcoming months.