National Handwashing Awareness Week

According to the Henry the Hand website, Dec. 2nd - Dec. 8th is National Handwashing Awareness Week. Henry the Hand wants everyone to know the dangers of not taking the simple steps to wash your hands.

Washing your hands should be an important part of everybody's everyday routine. According to the Henry the Hand website, in the United States in 1974 Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureas infections accounted for two percent of the total number of staph infections. in 1995 the numbers rose to nearly 22 percent, and again in 2004 the number elevated to a whopping 63 percent.

That is why National Handwashing Awareness Week needs to be taken seriously and a campaign to keep people aware of what a difference washing your hands can make. If everyone stuck to the "4 Principle of Hand Awareness", which are washing your hands when they are dirty and before eating, not coughing into your hands, not sneezing into your hands, and keeping your fingers out of your mouth. The impact would mean a reduction of nearly 36,000 death a year due to the flu and flu like symptoms, as well as a reduction of 90,000 deaths due to nosocomial infections (infections that occur in the hospital)

The amazing fact is that only you are responsible for giving yourself the flu or even flu like symptoms. Direct contact with you mucus membranes is how infectious disease get into your body. With the awareness that National Handwashing Awareness Week brings, the number of people contracting th flu should go down immensely.