School-based hand washing program reduced rates of respiratory, gastrointestinal illness

Nandrup-Bus I. Am J Infect Control. 2011;39:450-455.

Educating school children about proper hand washing may have a lasting effect in reducing school absences, according to results of a recent study.

In 2008, Inge Nandrup-Bus, RN, launched a 3-month targeted intervention in two Denmark elementary schools to reduce student absenteeism through increased hand hygiene. Nandrup-Bus then compared her results with a similar study she performed in 2007. The only significant change between the two studies was that the intervention school and the control school were reversed for the second trial.

Nandrup-Bus designed the study to determine the effect of mandatory, scheduled hand disinfection on actual absenteeism related to infectious illness.

The intervention school included 324 students aged 5 to 14 years who were each given a lesson in hand disinfection principles and practice. The students were then directed to disinfect their hands using ethanol gel three times throughout the school day.

Analysis of the data revealed a significant difference (P=.018) in reducing absenteeism because of infectious illness, both for girls (P=.011) and boys (P= .029), when comparing the intervention school for 2008 with the same school in 2007, when it was the control school.

For the control school, however, which had been the intervention school the prior year in hand washing, there were no significant changes between 2007 and 2008.

Respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses were reported to be the primary infectious causes of absence in both the intervention and control schools.

“Regular training in hand washing and hand disinfection would be a simple, low-cost action with very significant impact on reducing infectious illness absence periods among pupils,” the researchers said in a press release about the study.

Disclosure: The author reported no relevant financial disclosures.

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