By Freddy Monares
People use their hands everyday. These hands are used to meet new people, open doors, handle money and hold food.
I remember being around five-years-old and my mother telling me to wash my hands after I touched anything. To this day I will not leave a restroom without turning on the faucet, slapping some soap on my hands and lathering them until clean.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hand washing or the use of alcohol-based hand rubs has been shown to reduce overall infection rates. One of the several infections that can be prevented by washing your hands is Hepatitis A.
According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine -The World’s Largest Medical Library; symptoms of Hepatitis A include dark urine, fatigue, itching, loss of appetite, low-grade fever, nausea, vomiting, pale or clay-colored stools and jaundice.
The library also offered tips to prevent Hepatitis A, washing your hands is one of the two. The act of maintaining personal hygiene is so minuscule it is hard to believe students are not willing to participate in it.
Many students do not care to stop and wash their hands after using the restroom. This takes about 30 seconds. Water faucets are provided in the restrooms, not for decorative reasons, but to wash any germs your hands have.
Students that do not wash their hands affect almost everything and everyone. The knob to any door is the key to entering any room where thousands of hands touch these knobs to enter classrooms, homes and offices.
“They’re taking risks to their own health and to others,” said Ann Pisula, registered nurse at the student health center.
Pisula said that washing your hands is crucial to prevent the spread of disease, colds and the flu. Students do not realize that by not washing their hands they are also putting themselves at risk of infecting themselves with germs.
The hamburger is hoisted in to one’s mouth by the very tools that are used for cleaning yourself, your hands. I don’t have any germ phobia or carry around a little bottle of hand sanitizer because it is inevitable that they are everywhere.
It’s troubling when students walk out of restrooms and clearly do not wash their hands. The student health center provides students with free hand sanitizers in order to help prevent the spread of germs at school.
If students are unsure on the proper procedures to wash their hands, they can easily search on Google by typing in, “Hand washing procedures.”