A brief history of handwashing

Obstetrician Ignatz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865) was the first person to demonstrate by experiment that handwashing can prevent infections. In May 1847, he instigated a chlorine-based handwashing regime in the labour ward of the Vienna Maternity Hospital, where monthly maternal mortality rates from puerperal fever – caused by group A beta-haemolytic Streptococcus – sometimes approached 20%. By June 1847, the labour ward maternal mortality rate was 1.2% (MacDonald et al, 2004).

Almost 180 years later, the hand-drying facilities in public toilets serve as reservoirs of drug-resistant bacteria (Suen et al, 2019) and it is doubly unfortunate that the handwashing standards of some health professionals remains poor. For example, when Gülsen et al (2022) assessed the surgical handwashing practices of 66 operating room staff (surgeons and nurses), 51.5% failed to follow the correct procedure of surgical handwashing ‘and 47% incorrectly performed the procedure of rinsing hands and arms while keeping the hands above the elbows under running water and passing arms through the water in one direction during this process.’