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Why drying is as important as washing

The overlooked part of handwashing: drying David Swanson/IRIN
While handwashing with soap has been shown to cut down on fatal diarrhoeal diseases, soap and water alone cannot stop the spread of bacteria if hands are not properly dried, according to recent research from the UK.

“People think that after washing with soap and water, the job is finished,” said Anna Snelling, senior microbiology lecturer and one of the study’s researchers with the Bradford Infection Group at the University of Bradford.

“But handwashing does not sterilize, it only sanitizes. If you don’t dry your hands, you can still transfer bacteria.” Damp hands are actually more likely to attract new bacteria, she added, and can transfer bacteria brought to the skin surface during rubbing and hand washing.

However, the possibility that there could be more bacteria on the skin’s surface after a vigorous hand wash should in no way discourage people from washing their hands, she said.

“Clean hands save lives” is the theme of this year’s Global Handwashing Day, which promotes hand hygiene as a way to cut disease and even improve school attendance.

Hand washing with soap has been linked to a drop in acute respiratory infections, the leading under-five child killer, as well as cutting rates of diarrhoea by 40 percent.

Though governments mention hand drying in their hand hygiene guidelines, these recommendations rarely make it out of health circles to the general public, said Snelling. To date, there are no international standards for hand drying, she added. The UN World Health Organization (WHO) issued hand hygiene guidelines for health workers in May 2009 that detail how many seconds to run water, what type of cleaners to use and where to wash the hands; hand drying is mentioned in significantly less detail throughout the 270-page document.

Winner is…

The UK study tested different ways of hand drying to find out which one removed the most bacteria, comparing three different electric hand dryers with paper towels – and comparing these results with no drying at all. Researchers measured the amount of bacteria on volunteers’ hands that had been in contact with raw chickens and had all been washed the same way, but dried differently. Paper towels won out.

But no matter the material, Snelling stressed it is important to dry long and hard to get the benefits of the wash. “The process does not end when you turn off the tap.”

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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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