Hand Washing, Polio

Hand Washing

I score for cricket and sometimes the grounds don't have hot water in the wash basins, or maybe no soap. Does this matter? Sometimes there are no towels and no hand drier, so is it ok to not dry your hands?

If you used water hot enough to kill bacteria such as salmonella, you would scald your hands in just 30 seconds whereas the bacteria would survive more than 10 minutes, so you can't get the water hot enough to matter. I also can't imagine anyone standing there washing their hands for 10 minutes even if the water wasn't too hot! What matters is soap, rather than the temperature of the water. Anti-bacterial hand-washes are no better than soap, and can give rise to resistant bacteria.

As for drying your hands, it's ok not to if you aren't going to touch anything until they are dry which can be a bit difficult when you have to open the door to get out! If your hands are wet and you do touch something, the bacteria will have an easier time transferring to your hands than if you hands had been dry.

For more information see the BBC article Does it matter how you wash and dry your hands?

Polio

I've written about polio before on my other blog as we're so tantalisingly close to wiping it out completely. According to the NHS on polio, 95% of people who get polio don't even know they've had it, but 0.5% get permanent paralysis, which can be life-threatening. Because so few get symptoms, the WHO considers one confirmed case of polio paralysis to be evidence an epidemic. 5-10% of those who are paralysed die. Of those who survive, 40% get post polio syndrome 15–40 years after they first got polio. The symptoms of this include progressive muscle weakness, severe fatigue, and muscle and joint pain.

There are three types of wild polio virus. The last case of type II was in 1999, and in 2015 it was declared eradicated; the last case of type III was in September 2012. Type I is still indigenous in three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. The are also occasional cases of vaccine derived polio outbreaks. This is when the live weakened virus in the oral vaccine mutates and causes polio in an under-vaccinated population. However, the vaccine derived outbreaks don't seem to be easier to contain than the wild ones.

For up-to-date information, see the Polio Global Eradication Initiative site which is updated weekly.