Adam Engelhart

It’s Global Handwashing Day!

October 15th, 2008

And now, a public-health message from the Tellumo.net World Service.

So, the good people of Wikipedia have informed me that today is Global Handwashing Day! The audience of this blog is almost by definition an affluent and educated one, by global standards, but I’m struck by how much washing of hands, with soap and water, has improved public health for the better. It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s remarkably effective. Indeed, one study holds it can reduce the incidence of disease causing diarrhea by nearly half–a large number in anyone’s math, and even larger in tropical nations with limited health-care resources. The Global Handwashing Day site I linked to earlier has further information on the subject.

In the unlikely event that soap is unavailable in your locality, I have written a little monograph on the subject, which begins here. If you require information on manufacturing lye, check this out; if on the manufacture of oil, talk with someone who’s been to a farm of nearly any description.

Anyway: hand washing with soap. It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s probably the greatest public-health advancement of the 20th century (although penicillin is right up there, even if it isn’t as cheap). So scrub up, ok?

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