Wednesday 15 October 2008
The further north you go, the more likely you are to have faecal bacteria
on your hands, especially if you are a man, according to a preliminary
study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
But women living in the South and Wales have little to feel smug about.
In London, they are three times as likely as their men folk to have
dirty hands, and in Cardiff, twice as likely. The men of London registered
the most impressive score among all those surveyed, with a mere 6% found
to have faecal bugs on their hands. Overall more than one on four commuters
have bacteria which come from faeces on their hands.
The Dirty Hands Study was conducted in order to provide a snapshot of
the nation's hand hygiene habits, as part of the world's first Global
Handwashing Day today. Commuters' hands were swabbed at bus stops outside
five train stations around the UK (Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham,
Euston and Cardiff).
The results indicated that commuters in Newcastle were up to three times
more likely than those in London to have faecal bacteria on their hands
(44% compared to 13%) while those in Birmingham and Cardiff were roughly
equal in the hand hygiene stakes (23% and 24% respectively). Commuters
in Liverpool also registered a high score for faecal bacteria, with
a contamination rate of 34%.
In Newcastle and Liverpool, men were more likely than women to show
contamination (53% of men compared to 30% of women in Newcastle, and
36% of men compared to 31% of women in Liverpool), although in the other
three centres, the women's hands were dirtier. Almost twice as many
women than men in Cardiff were found to have contamination (29% compared
to 15 %) while in Euston, they were more than three times likelier than
the men to have faecal bacteria on their hands (the men here registered
an impressive 6%, compared to a rate of 21% in the women). In Birmingham,
the rate for women was slightly higher than the men (26% compared to
21%).
The bacteria that were found are all from the gut, and do not necessarily
always cause disease, although they do indicate that hands have not
been washed properly.
Dr Val Curtis, Director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of
Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, comments: 'We were flabbergasted by
the finding that so many people had faecal bugs on their hands. The
figures were far higher than we had anticipated, and suggest that there
is a real problem with people washing their hands in the UK. If any
of these people had been suffering from a diarrhoeal disease, the potential
for it to be passed around would be greatly increased by their failure
to wash their hands after going to the toilet'.
Ends.
For more information, or to interview the investigators, please contact
Gemma Howe in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Press
Office on 0207 927 2802 or gemma.howe@lshtm.ac.uk
Notes to Editors:
Global Handwashing Day was initiated by the Public-Private Partnership
for Handwashing (www.globalhandwashing.org), which is dedicated to promoting
handwashing with soap to reduce diarrhoea in developing countries and
implement large-scale handwashing interventions by combining the expertise
and resources of the soap industry with the facilities and resources
of governments. Global Handwashing Day activities are being implemented
in more than forty countries and focus on raising awareness among policymakers
and the public about the role handwashing plays in public health.
For more information about Global Handwashing Day, please go to:
www.globalhandwashingday.org. All materials on the website are available
to be downloaded, or can be used in publication.
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