Handwashing Is Inexpensive Disease Prevention Says Gospel for Asia

Do you know what is the single most effective method in cutting down the contraction and spreading of diseases? You do this every day. Hopefully more than once a day. It’s the simple, life-saving method of washing your hands!

And you know what’s right around the corner? Global Handwashing Day . Oct. 15 is the day to raise awareness of how tremendously important washing hands is to saving lives.

Many of us probably grew up in homes where our parents taught us to wash our hands before we ate or after playing outside. Maybe as kids we didn’t know exactly why we had to wash our hands, but it was still a lesson engrained in us, right?

In some parts of Asia, many children don’t grow up with this common knowledge, because it isn’t so common.Children in a Believers Church Sunday School class participate in a Global Handwashing Day program on October 15, 2016.

Children in a Believers Church Sunday School class participate in a Global Handwashing Day program on October 15, 2016.

A report from Global Handwashing Partnership stated that “in rural areas [of India], 54 percent of caregivers washed their hands after using the toilet, 13 percent before preparing food, 27 percent before feeding a child, 85 percent after contact with a child’s feces.”

That means many men, women and children across the rural areas of Asia are eating meals cooked by hands that aren’t washed properly with soap. Think about that for a second.

Inexpensive Disease Prevention

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , “About 1.8 million children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, the top two killers of young children around the world. Handwashing with soap could protect about 1 out of every 3 young children who get sick with diarrhea and almost 1 out of 5 young children with respiratory infections like pneumonia.”

These ailments are often contracted by the germs and bacteria living on people’s hands. Teaching people at a young age about the importance of washing hands with soap can also save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter .


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