December 18, 2009
Wash Your Hands: Remember Ignaz Semmelweis? Of course you don't. But you're in his debt nonetheless. Ignaz Semmelweis, an Austrian-Hungarian physician, first demonstrated over 150 years ago that hand hygiene can prevent the spread of disease. Hand hygiene as a practice includes performing handwashing, or using antiseptic handwash, alcohol-based hand rub, or surgical hand hygiene/antisepsis.
Dr. Semmelweis worked in a hospital in Vienna whose maternity patients were dying at such an alarming rate that they begged to be sent home. Most of those dying had been treated by student physicians who worked on cadavers during an anatomy class before beginning their rounds in the maternity ward.
Because the students did not wash their hands effectively between touching the dead and the living–handwashing was an unrecognized hygienic practice at the time–pathogenic bacteria from the cadavers regularly were transmitted to the mothers via the students' hands.
The result was a death rate five times higher for mothers who delivered in one clinic of the hospital than for mothers who delivered at another clinic not attended by the student physicians.
In an experiment considered quaint at best by his colleagues, Dr. Semmelweis insisted that his students wash their hands before treating the mothers–and deaths on the maternity ward fell fivefold.
Unquestioned today as the most important tool in the healthcare worker's arsenal for preventing infection, handwashing was not readily accepted in Dr. Semmelweis's era. Indeed, his pleas to make handwashing a routine practice throughout the hospital were largely met with derision. Another 50 years would pass before the importance of handwashing as a preventive measure would be widely accepted by the medical profession. Sanitation is now a standard and thousands of lives have been saved because of Dr. Semmelweis's discovery.
Good-For-You Snack: Cut pineapple into chunks or strips. Freeze for a
cool, refreshing snack.
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