BACKGROUND Diarrhoea is a common cause of morbidity and a leading cause of death among children aged less than five years, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. It is transmitted by ingesting contaminated food or drink, by direct person-to-person contact, or from contaminated hands. Hand washing is one of a range of hygiene promotion interventions that can interrupt the transmission...

IGnAz SEmmElWEIS – HAnD WASHInG PIonEEr Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 – August 13, 1865) was the Hungarian – Austrian physician who demonstrated that puerperal fever (also known as “childbed fever”) was contagious and that its incidence could be drastically reduced by enforcing appropriate hand washing by medical care-givers. He made this discovery in 1847 while head of the Maternity D...

Inadequate hand washing by food workers is an important contributing factor to foodborne disease outbreaks in retail food establishments (RFEs). We conducted a survey of RFEs to investigate the effect of hand washing training, availability of hand washing facilities, and the ability of the person in charge (PIC) to describe hand washing according to the Minnesota Food Code (food code) on worker...

Improvement of food worker hand washing practices is critical to the reduction of foodborne illness and is dependent upon a clear understanding of current hand washing practices. To that end, this study collected detailed observational data on food worker hand washing practices. Food workers (n = 321) were observed preparing food, and data were recorded on specific work activities for which han...