Why wash your hands during epidemic prevention, Zhihu?

Everyone knows the truth that "the disease enters from the mouth", but in fact, it should be "the disease enters from the hand" in many cases. So we should form the good habit of washing our hands. Doctors point out that each of our hands may be contaminated by more than 400,000 kinds of microorganisms, including various pathogenic bacteria, fungi, viruses, mycoplasma and chlamydia. Many common infectious diseases, such as common cold, influenza, pneumonia, acute diarrhea, parasitic diseases, skin infections, dermatophytosis, trachoma, conjunctivitis and so on. , can be infected by contaminated hands touching the mouth, nose and eyes.

Forming a good habit of washing hands can save lives.

As early as 20 1 1, a British study found that people who are used to washing their hands with soap or hand sanitizer are more than 60% less likely to suffer from various infectious diseases, mainly respiratory diseases and digestive tract diseases, than those who often wipe their hands with disinfectant paper towels or use disinfectant spray instead of washing their hands.

The World Health Organization also points out that about 3.5 million children in the world cannot live to the age of five because of pneumonia or diarrhea. If they can be helped to wash their hands with soap or hand sanitizer, the number of children dying of respiratory diseases around the world will drop by 25%. The number of children who die from digestive tract infections will drop by 50%. It can be seen that developing good hand washing habits may save thousands of lives.