Opinion

October 15 is Global Handwashing Day.

The day was designated with an eye to heightening the awareness of important hand hygiene, handwashing with soap in particular, and translating the policy on handwashing into mass action.

In the course of exploring the way to maintain health, people noticed that their hands are one of the main germ carriers.

According to experts, millions of children suffer or die from diarrhoea and pneumonia every year and these germs spread mostly through hands.

The Global Handwashing Partnership marked Global Handwashing Day for the first time on October 15 2008 by enlisting 120 million children in 73 countries.

Since then, many countries and international, public and non-governmental organizations have commemorated the day every year as they promote the importance of handwashing with soap.

This year’s GHD theme is “Unite for Universal Hand Hygiene”.

Hand hygiene is important in preventing all sorts of diseases including communicable ones.

The importance of hand hygiene has more graphically been highlighted by COVID-19 that is still spreading rapidly around the world.

According to information available, an average of 60 000 bacteria or viruses live on one human hand. Therefore, 60 percent of infectious diseases are said to be contracted through hands.

Especially, the spread of such malignant epidemics as COVID-19 necessitates more thorough handwashing.

Handwashing with soap is a very simple action taking only 20 seconds, but it markedly reduces the danger of outbreaks of contagious diseases like flu.

It can prevent skin and eye diseases and epidemics and plays an important role in reducing the spread of infectious pathogens including those of cholera, Ebola, dysentery, SARS and hepatitis E.

In the DPRK, information and education activities are intensified to have all people wash hand correctly on the occasion of GHD, and children are taught to do proper handwashing from very young age.

To mark the day, online lectures will be given under the titles of “Technical requirements for safe water supply and the methods of evaluating water quality” and “Outbreaks of diseases caused by environmental microorganisms and importance of handwashing in preventing them” and animation Pyol Nam and Rubber Ball will be screened at the Grand People’s Study House in Pyongyang.