COLUMBUS, Ohio - People shouldn’t stress if they can’t find hand sanitizer to purchase: After all, the director of the Ohio Department of Health doesn’t use it much.

“I don’t love it,” Dr. Amy Acton said during a Feb. 24 interview. “I wash my hands a lot. That will make a difference.”

Acton, a licensed preventive medicine doctor, is a true believer in the power of washing hands with soap and water. Throughout interviews and events for the new coronavirus, she regularly cites a study that shows the effectiveness of washing hands to prevent infection by disease.

What was the study?

Dr. Amy Acton, director of the Ohio Department of Health, spoke with the cleveland.com editorial board. (Laura Hancock/cleveland.com)

Researchers conducted a study of 60 elementary schools in Cairo, Egypt -- 30 that were randomly selected for a hand-washing campaign and 30 that were not.

Students at the 30 hand-washing schools were required to bring soap and towels in a bag from home, with the school providing them if the family could not afford them. They had to wash at least twice a day for around 45 seconds each time, followed by rinsing and wiping with the clean towel.

The study lasted 12 weeks, from Feb. 16 to May 12, 2008.

To promote hand hygiene, children sang songs, played games and completed puzzles about hand-washing. Some had contests for the best article or best drawing about hand-washing. Some students got to visit a soap manufacturing plant, others a water purification plant.

What did they find?

(Neil Blake | MLive.com)Neil Blake

School teachers and nurses investigated the reason each child in the first three primary grades was absent. When parents replied that the kids were sick, school nurses visited the children in their homes or in the school clinics, asking questions and taking temperatures and nasal swabs.

Across the 30 schools, overall illness-related absenteeism was down 21% in comparison to the 30 schools that did not have the hand-washing campaign.

Absences caused by influenza-like illnesses were down 40%

Absences caused by laboratory-confirmed flu were down 50%

Absentees caused by diarrhea were down 33%

Absentees caused by pink eye were down 67%

What can be learned?

Hand sanitizer sold out at a Columbus-area Target on Sunday. As the new coronavirus spreads, Ohio Department of Health officials will update numbers daily. (Laura Hancock/cleveland.com)

Although the study involved children, Acton said that the effectiveness of hand-washing cannot be downplayed for adults too.

While there is no current study on the effectiveness of hand-washing in preventing COVID-19 infections, coronavirus is a virus, the flu is viral. Diarrhea and pink eye can also be caused by viruses.

Working in public health can be hard when people are lax about washing their hands. it’s one of the most effective ways to keep a person healthy, she said.

“The trick of public health is when we don’t see it, we forget about it,” she said. “We get complacent.”

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