Effectiveness of a Multifactorial Handwashing Program to Reduce School Absenteeism Due to Acute Gastroenteritis

Abstract

The use of hand sanitizer as a complement to handwashing with soap is an efficient measure to reduce absent days and the number of school absenteeism cases due to AGE.

Effectiveness of hand hygiene interventions in reducing illness absence among children in educational settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Age of participating children was not always reported. Five of the 13 school-based studies included all children in each school; 26 27 37 39 41 others included one or more age grade. Six studies included children under 3 years.…”

“…Six studies were excluded due to design flaws (risk of contamination between study arms); cross-over design, 22 23 clusters at class level, 24–26 and clusters at class and school levels. 27 28 Therefore, MAs were not conducted.…”

Hand Hygiene Program Decreases School Absenteeism Due to Upper Respiratory Infections

“…This study was carried out over the course of 8 months (October 2009 to May 2010). The schools were randomized for the study after the head teacher of each agreed to participate in it . Members of the experimental group (EG) washed their hands with soap and water complemented with hand sanitizer; members of the control group (CG) practiced usual handwashing techniques.…”

Turkey Handwashing Survey: suggestion for taking the ecological model into better consideration

“…Pneumonia and diarrhea account for 29 % of all deaths of children less than 5 years of age and result in the loss of 2 million young lives each year [2]. There are many studies showing that specifically the improvement of handwashing is decreasing substantially the diarrhea morbidity [3][4][5][6][7]. The handwashing is one of the primary prevention not only from the oral fecal diseases but also from the respiratory infected diseases [4,6,[8][9][10].…”