Kids Taught to Wash Hands in School Avoid Sick Days: Study: MedlinePlus

Kids Taught to Wash Hands in School Avoid Sick Days: Study: MedlinePlus: "Kids Taught to Wash Hands in School Avoid Sick Days: Study
Training in hand hygiene and disinfection may be a simple, cheap way to reduce infectious illness


URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_115182.html (*this news item will not be available after 11/07/2011)

By Robert Preidt
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 HealthDay Logo
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TUESDAY, Aug. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Good knowledge of hand hygiene among students reduces school absenteeism, researchers report.

The study included 324 elementary school students, aged 5 to 14, in Denmark. The children were given a lesson in hand disinfection theory and practice and told to disinfect their hands using ethanol gel three times each school day.

During the three-month study, there was a 66 percent decrease in students who were absent for four or more days and a 20 percent increase in children with zero absences, compared to the previous school year, the investigators found.

'Regular training in [hand washing] and [hand disinfection] would be a simple, low-cost action with very significant impact on reducing infectious illness absence periods among pupils,' stated study author and infection preventionist Inge Nandrup-Bus, in a news release from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

The study is published in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.

SOURCE: Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, news release, Aug. 4, 2011
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