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Handwashing is not just for coronavirus - Good hygiene could help reduce antibiotic use
May 31, 2020
Coronavirus put focus on handwashing, but basic hygiene is crucial to stopping a variety of diseases.  Home hygiene has big role in reducing spread of antimicrobial resistance.  Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health.
One in six mobile phones have faecal matter on them . Globally, people wash their hands after using the toilet roughly one in five times. An office work station has 400 times more microbes than a toilet seat .
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Improved everyday hygiene practices not only slow the spread of COVID-19, they also play a crucial role in reducing the risk of common infections and driving down antibiotic use. Home and community hygiene needs to be included as part of plans to reduce hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) , according to a new paper developed on behalf of the Global Hygiene Council.
According to the paper, between November 2019 and March 2020 there were 16,500 deaths linked to SARS-CoV-2; in this same time 258,000 people would have died as a result of AMR.
Clean water, sanitation and targeted hygiene can significantly reduce the circulation of resistant bacteria in homes and communities, irrespective of a country’s overall social and economic development, the authors say. And while much of the focus on targeting AMR has been on measures by healthcare providers, there needs to be a reduction in the community. “We cannot allow hygiene in home and everyday life settings to become the weak link in the chain,” says the paper.
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