When someone tells you that hand-washing is very important, you might not only assume it’s false, but you might also be wondering why that person is using a phrase that is very generic. Well, if you actually think about it, the fact that hand-washing helps prevent sickness might be generic, but it’s still a fact. There are so many reasons why hand-washing is so important: it helps avoid catching illnesses, it helps prevent the excessive use of antibiotics, and it helps reduce the number of absences from school or work annually.
Hand-washing might not seem that appealing, but it’s something that must not be avoided when it comes to maintaining one’s health. During the day, everyone comes into contact with a number of items, some being very dirty and full of germs. After touching items such as this, people generally tend to touch their face and other parts of the body while they aren’t aware that their hands are full of germs, and this can cause the rest of their body to catch these germs, thus causing them to get sick. Also, some people choose not to wash their hands before eating or drinking something, and when they eat something when their hands are full of germs, they will swallow all the germs, which can cause them to fall sick.
Hand-washing not only prevents illnesses, but it can also prevent deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “handwashing with soap can protect about one out of every three young children who get sick with diarrhea and almost one out of five young children with respiratory infections like pneumonia.” While most people follow this practice and wash their hands in order to prevent sickness, the CDC argues that most a lot of people tend to wash without soap or use very little soap while washing their hands after using the bathroom or touching something full of germs, and they argued that washing hands with enough soap is much more effective because it can kill off germs much more effectively. Not washing hands easily spreads germs to others, which can lead to the sickness spreading to them. Especially in school, there are so many people who go to the bathroom, but they come out immediately instead of washing their hands before going back to class. Especially in school, since there are a lot of students, doing this is very dangerous. Since people touch so many different things in school, if they touch any of these objects such as the table or a book with their hands full of germs, a number of other students can end up touching the same objects and become ill due to the unwashed hands that came into contact with that exact object earlier. This is a risk anywhere, but especially in schools and offices where there are a lot of people, this risk of sickness spreading to a lot of people is very high in these areas.
Another issue with not washing hands is since this leads to sickness, a lot of people rely on antibiotics to heal their sickness, and an excessive use of these is very bad. Although antibiotics are very effective in healing illnesses, they can be harmful if they are overused. The problem is that a lot of people aren’t really worried about falling sick because they believe that antibiotics are the way to go every time they fall sick. According to a website called healthline, an overuse of antibiotics causes upset sensitive gut flora. Intestines generally contain 100 trillion bacteria strains. Although some strains are deadly, there are other bacteria which support digestion and bolster immunity. Once you keep taking antibiotics while having a serious infection, a lot of the good bacteria can be wiped out, and the amount of bad bacteria in one’s system can increase, which can cause a lot of harm. Another bad news is that children are a lot more vulnerable than adults to the bad side effects of antibiotics, which can cause irreversible changes to their gut flora and can only be prevented by the reduced use of antibiotics. Antibiotics can also increase cases of untreatable gonorrhea and fatal diarrhea cases, especially in children. Though antibiotics have so many advantages such as being able to kill bacteria, increased reliance on it can have harmful side effects.
The final reason is due to the sicknesses caused every year by not washing hands, absences are only increasing. Due to students getting sick many times during the year, a lot of students stay home many times during the year instead of going to school. While there might be many other factors that lead to absenteeism such as a death in the family or mental health issues, the number one cause for absenteeism every year is believed to be illness. The transfer of bacteria and germs between students in school can get multiple students sick, which can cause all those kids to stay at home and not go to school, the students can perhaps all get sick at the same time. According to a study done in 2014, “The average student in the U.S. (K-12) misses 4.5 days per school year, while the average teacher misses 5.3 days per school year.” While 4.5 days of school might seem very less, this is actually very impactful in the grand scheme of things. Becoming absent can cause many problems such as students’ grades to plummet, as well as school income to decrease. Because of these reasons, it’s very significant for students to maintain their health well by washing hands regularly, because avoiding this practice can both cause problems to them as well as their school.
Because of all these reasons covered by this blog explaining the benefits that come with hand-washing, this practice must be followed regularly, and avoiding it will cause serious harm to a person. People must prevent getting sick themselves, spreading germs to other people, relying too much on antibiotics, and being absent to school regularly.
Sources
“The Impact Of Hand Hygiene On School Absenteeism.” HAPPI, www.happi.com/issues/2019-04-01/view_features/the-impact-of-hand-hygiene-on-school-absenteeism/.
Krans, Brian. “5 Unintended Consequences of Overusing Antibiotics.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 2 Sept. 2014, www.healthline.com/health-news/five-unintended-consequences-antibiotic-overuse-031114#1.-Antibiotics-Increase-Fatal-Diarrhea-Cases-in-Children.
“Show Me the Science - Why Wash Your Hands?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 Sept. 2020, www.cdc.gov/handwashing/why-handwashing.html#:~:text=Handwashing%20with%20soap%20removes%20germs,mouth%20and%20make%20us%20sick.
“3 Reasons Why Handwashing Should Matter to You.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2018/10/handwashing-matters/.
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