Opinion article by Paula Teixeira, faculty member at the Faculty of Biotechnology and researcher at the Centre for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry.
“On 5 May, World Hand Hygiene Day is observed. This year’s slogan, ‘Action saves lives’, does not ask for perfection, it asks for consistency. Because the problem is not a lack of knowledge. We learn from an early age that we should wash our hands. The problem lies in the gap between knowing and doing, and it is in that gap that diseases take hold.
Hand hygiene is not a gesture reserved for hospitals. At home, at school, at work or in the kitchen, our hands touch everything—raw food, surfaces, mobile phones, door handles—and we rarely realise what they carry from one place to another. Good hygiene is simpler than it seems: doing it properly, at the right moments. Before cooking and before eating, after using the toilet, after coughing or handling rubbish, whenever moving from raw to ready-to-eat food. Water and soap, careful friction, proper drying. Hand sanitiser is useful when there is no alternative, but there are moments when only a sink will do.”
