Nyanza Province, Kenya is characterized by poor water quality and high diarrhoea prevalence. To address these problems, nurses in a maternal and child health clinic in Homa Bay, Kenya were trained in household water chlorination with a locally available, social marketed product, and in six steps of proper hand washing. They were asked to communicate this information to their clients. Interviews...

The risk of inadequate hand hygiene in food handling settings is exacerbated when water is limited or unavailable, thereby making washing with soap and water difficult. The SaniTwice method involves application of excess alcohol-based hand sanitizer (ABHS), hand "washing" for 15 s, and thorough cleaning with paper towels while hands are still wet, followed by a standard application of ABHS. Thi...

Hand washing is an indispensable procedure for surgical nurses. Although scrubbing up with a brush is preferable to prevent infections, it is not clear how irritating to the skin scrubbing with a brush is compared with hand washing without a brush. TEWL, high frequency conductance and pH were measured on the hand skin of the same group of nurses before and after daily hand washing for 11 days i...

BACKGROUND Health care associated infection has been identified as one of the major challenges of modern medicine and remains as a major health concern around the globe. Hands of the health-care workers are potential vehicle for transmission of pathogenic organisms within the healthcare environment. Hand washing is widely accepted as one of the most effective measures in prevention of health ca...

OBJECTIVE To study the knowledge and practice of hand washing among mothers and children of shikharchandi slum of Bhubaneswar, Odisha and to recommend possible measures to improve the current practices. METHODOLOGY Present cross-sectional study was carried out in the Shikharchandi slum located in the Bhubaneswar city of Orissa state in India. 150 women and 80 children were interviewed. Childr...

We evaluated the utility of electronic loggers to measure the effects of a simple intervention designed to influence the rates of hand washing with soap within enclosed toilets and bathrooms in low-income urban households in Kerala, India. 58 households were given three items with embedded electronic loggers for a period of 2-5 days. Two logged soaps tracked hand and body washing in the bathroo...

introduction: nosocomial infections affect nearly 10% of hospitalized patients. the majority of nosocomial infections are transmitted by contact, primarily by hands of health care workers. the micro-organisms on the hand can be divided into transient, resident and infectious flora. transient flora is the main cause of nosocomial infection which acquired primarily by contact and loosely attached...

BACKGROUND Hand washing is considered as one of the most effective hygiene promotion activities for public health in developing countries. This study compared hand washing knowledge and practices in BRAC's water; sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme areas over time. METHODS This study is a cross-sectional comparative study between baseline (2006), midline (2009) and end-line (2011) surveys...

Hand washing is considered the single most important intervention for prevention of nosocomial infections in patients and health care workers. Unfortunately, compliance with standard protocols for hand hygiene in the health care environment, and especially within intensive care areas such as operating rooms and post-anesthesia care units, has been generally poor. In this article, we consider th...