Don't Touch Me!

Americans should wash their hands more. Wait, let me rephrase this, people should wash their hands more. I am pretty sure everyone—at least once in their life—have used a public bathroom and have heard the roaring sound of a flushing toilet, but instead of hearing the facet running next—the bathroom door squeaks open and closes with a click.

Thus this left you seating on the toilet wondering, “Why didn’t they wash their hands?”

According to Dr. Philip Tierno, a director of clinical microbiology at the New York University Hospital Center and the author of “The Secret Life of Germs,” the bathroom is the first line of defense to eliminate more than 2 million germs thriving on our hands, in our fingernails, and caked between our wedding ring and ring finger. The Food Standards Agency in London reported that germs hiding under bracelets and watches could have as many germs as there are people in Europe! However, up to half of all men and a quarter of women fail to wash their hands after using the toilet. It's estimated that fewer than 50% of people actually wash their hands after using the bathroom. And for those who do—very few do it correctly—for instance damp hands can spread 1,000 times more germs than dry hands or using clean, dry hands to open the Germtopia door knob. Dr. Tierno also noted that it takes 20 seconds for a proper hand wash—getting in between your fingers, getting on top of your knuckles, getting under your nail beds with plenty of soap, and rinse with water.

For God’s sake people please wash your damn hands! I mean…we do live in the United States where water is not scarce but hospital bills are high. Moreover, we don’t have to hike miles across a desert to fetch water from the nearest watering hole like those poor kids in Africa with the bulging stomachs—which is not filled with water if you are wondering. In fact, their bullies are infected with nematode intestinal parasites, or worms. In a study conducted by Glickman and his colleagues that was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, stool examinations were performed on 286 randomly selected children from 1-18 years old from three rural villages in Guinea, Africa. Their results concluded that 53% were infected with worms and education in simple hygiene, such as hand washing before consuming food, will help reduce the number of future cases. The Centers for Disease Control recommends singing "Happy Birthday" twice through for an effective wash.

On a lighter note, and don’t take me as a hater—but I absolutely despise people who do not wash their hands before handling my food. And after one incident which left me scarred for life…In February of 1991, while visiting Vietnam for the first time, I caught a fever one night like any typical 8-year-old kid visiting a Third World Courtney. Feeling hungry the next morning, I requested for a hot bowl of soup—I quickly engulfed it before getting on a 32-hour train ride from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi to visit my grandmother. After a couple hours on the train, I got my first “got-to-go” signal, then my second, then my third, and by my fourth time I stopped eating and drinking because my toilet paper supply was getting low. By the time I got off the train, I was lifeless, drained, and too weak to budge. The local doctor in my grandma’s village visited me the following day, with a diagnosis that I already knew, diarrhea.

Til this day, I am still convinced it was that suspicious poop soup my cousin bought for me the morning before we departed to grandma’s house. He claimed that he bought it from a clean restaurant next door; I think the opposite, he probably got it from one of those food vendors on the street who hands were tainted with Ecoli bacteria. According to the Hospitality Institute of Technology & Management, each year in the US an average of 76 million cases are caused by foodborne illnesses with 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths—and at least 25 percent of these illnesses are due to improper hand washing. For God’s sake people please wash your damn hands! Our war-fare against germs is controllable and the visit the doctor’s office for food poisoning, even worst bird flu or MRSA, could have been prevented if people wash their damn hands!

I admit it. There were times when I didn’t wash my hands. Not because I didn’t want to but I couldn’t.
(still in progress)