“Healthy life is on your hands”

Director of School of Health, European University of Lefke (EUL), Prof. Dr. Deniz Şelimen made some statements on the occasion of “15^th October Global Handwashing Day”.

Şelimen, saying that “Promoting hygiene practices and raising awareness on this issue is an important community health service” and emphasized that therefore it is one of the basic rules to wash the hands under the right conditions in order to create healthy environment conditions, to remove and neutralize the causative agents.

Şelimen said that “It is not possible to prevent infectious diseases, foodborne infections, diarrhea in schools, parasites, bacterial and fungal infections transmitted by the toilets as a result of the lack or neglect of people’s hand washing habits. During the day we do everything with our hands and our hands create a suitable environment for germs’’ and underlined that the hands should be washed before eating and before going to the toilet, whereas the hands are usually being washed after the meal and after the toilet.

The most effective way to protect contagious diseases is to gain the habit of handwashing

Şelimen said that the most effective way to protect especially the children from the contagious diseases such as hepatitis A, diarrhea, tuberculosis and enterozoa is ensuring that they adopt a habit of handwashing and added that “Research has shown that the habit of washing hands with soap, especially before and after meals, is more life-saving than vaccination or medical intervention. Hand washing is an important personal hygiene problem not only for children but also for adults. In this context, infections both in our current lives and in hospital environments threaten our health seriously”. Şelimen based on this purpose, mentioned that, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) accepted the date of 15 October as “Global Handwashing Day” and Global Handwashing Day is being celebrated since 2008 all the world and it is adopted as a national celebrating day by the governments.

Şelimen said that “It is a social duty to raise awareness and raise awareness in order to gain the habit of hand washing starting from the preschool period and to maintain it throughout life’’. And she underlined that there is a great responsibility for teachers, institutions and organizations, especially for health professionals.