Since the severe years of COVID-19 have passed, many of us have sadly abandoned regular hand washing, a life-saving habit which the pandemic had imposed on us.

Although it became more so during the pandemic, clean hands, which comes by regular hand washing, have always saved lives. It was the absoluteness of the truth in the slogan that compelled a popular hospital in Apapa, Lagos, to write it boldly on the walls of its entrance: “Clean hands save life.”

Medical experts were not surprised, therefore, when early this week, the World Health Organisation, WHO, came out with some stunning statistics which indicated that over 1.1 million new cases of COVID-19 had been reported between December 11, 2023 and January 7, 2024, with 8,700 new fatalities globally. The data also revealed that as of January 7, a total of 6,972,613 million people had died of COVID-19 globally!

For the information of those of us who have abandoned the habit of proper and regular hand washing, COVID-19 may not be as widespread as it was in 2020 and 2021, but the disease is still well and alive!

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, BCCDC, a government agency, maintains that 80 per cent of common infections are spread by hands. Therefore, washing one’s hands at least five times a day has been shown to significantly decrease the frequency of colds, COVID-19, influenza and other infections.

Given that 80 per cent of communicable diseases can be transferred by touch, that is person-to-person contact, washing one’s hands a few times a day can reduce diarrhoea rates by 40 per cent, says BCCDC. For the same reason, touching one’s face with dirty hands spreads sicknesses like pneumonia, cold and the flu.

Our hands pick up bacteria and viruses when we touch contaminated surfaces. Some viruses and bacteria can live two hours or longer on tables, doorknobs, and telephones.

When we touch our faces after touching contaminated surfaces, or after shaking other people’s contaminated hands, germs enter our bodies through our eyes, noses, and mouths. With the contaminated hand, some people may even pick up some snacks like groundnuts, cakes or meat pies, straight into their mouths.

Medical experts further warn that “many cases of colds, flu and food-borne illness are spread by unclean hands, and these diseases are responsible for billions of dollars each year in healthcare expenditures and productivity losses in the workplace”. The best protection from these types of illness, the experts say, is frequent hand washing to get rid of potentially harmful bacteria.

Luckily for us, different health authorities have given us useful guidelines on when to wash our hands and the recommended hand washing techniques. We must wash our hands each time we use the restroom, before and after staff meetings, after scanning newspapers or magazines, before and after lunch, after using co-workers’ keyboard or tools, before and after a meet-and-greet activity.

With lather soap, we should wash hands thoroughly, including wrists, palms, back of hands, fingers, and under fingernails for at least 20 seconds, and then, rinse our hands well under running water. Indeed, clean hands save lives.

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