5 Reasons Why You Should Care About Personal Hygiene
Do you tend to be fairly blasé about washing your hands? Not so fast – you could be contributing to illness, infections and even antibacterial resistance! These five reasons are sure to convince everyone of the importance of personal hygiene.
Reason 1: Good hygiene saves lives.
Inadequate sanitation and hygiene are responsible for a huge amount of preventable deaths – in fact it’s believed that adequate hygiene could save around 8 million lives around the world. Good hygiene practices can reduce the risk of contracting gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, including influenza and salmonella.
Reason 2: Effective hand hygiene can reduce sick days and lost productivity.
Good hand hygiene also has a significant benefit towards business productivity. One German study found that using hand sanitiser significantly cut down the number of sick days that employees took off from work because of colds, coughs, fevers or diarrhoea. That means having hand sanitiser dispensers and a personal hygiene checklist in your workplace is a very good idea.
Reason 3: Hand hygiene could be crucial in the fight against antibiotic resistance.
The World Health Organization has stressed the role of hand hygiene in managing antibiotic resistance and the development of ‘super bugs’. It’s believed that at any given time, 7-10% of patients undergoing treatment will acquire at least one health care-associated infection. If medical and care staff can perform best practice hand hygiene then they can drastically cut these infections and the resulting dependence on antibiotics.
Reason 4: Great personal hygiene makes you a great role model.
With all of these reasons to keep your hands as clean as possible, it’s important that we pass on effective hygiene practices to the next generation. Be sure to teach kids in your life the value of washing their hands regularly and after going to the bathroom. We have some fun classroom activities that can help with this.
Reason 5: Personal hygiene makes you more attractive to other people.
It’s no secret that good hygiene will help our social standing. After all, meeting someone with clean clothes and scrubbed fingernails will be much more pleasant that meeting someone with grubby hands and clothes.
Research has indicated that clean and bright teeth make you more attractive to the opposite sex, and we’re guessing the same goes for general hygiene too.
For assistance with hand dryers, paper towel dispensers and washroom consumables for your commercial washroom, contact the Davidson Washroom team today.
