It seems that there is good reason to teach young kiddies to wash their hands properly.  Infectious diseases such as COVID (still amongst us) and colds and flu can be defended against by good hand hygiene.

A recent study by the Education University of Hong Kong investigated whether there was any correlation between flu infection in families with kindergarten-aged children and hand-washing and whether hand-washing lowered children’s absenteeism due to seasonal flu.

For the study, parents attended a one-hour session on good hand-hygiene and their children were given four weekly 45-minute training sessions.  Parents were also given a hand-hygiene knowledge test before and after the programme.

Good hand-hygiene prevented infections

The results of the study showed that children with strong parenting and good hand hygiene had fewer recorded signs and symptoms of flu-like illnesses. The absence rates in all participating kindergartens owing to flu decreased from 21.5% to 12% in the three-month study period.

In the hand-hygiene knowledge test, 6.8% of parents correctly answered the question on the seven-step hand hygiene technique before the program, while 79.5% answered it correctly after the program. In the hand-hygiene skills test, the parts of the hands that were not properly washed before the intervention were the back of the hands, the back of the fingers, the thumbs and the wrists.

After the programme, the percentages of the properly washed areas on both hands increased significantly, in particular the wrists from 0.5% to 82%, and 27% more children showed concern about the hand hygiene behaviour of the people around them, especially their parents. The children also shared what they had learned with their parents, and their parents started paying more attention to proper handwashing. This also provided more common topics for conversation between them, resulting in increased communication and closer bonds.

Researchers concluded that improved hand-hygiene helped reduce kindergartners’ absenteeism from flu-like illnesses.

The study is published in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health.