Handwashing Annotation Essay

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Freeman, M. C., M. E. Stocks, O. Cumming, A. Jeandron, J. P. T. Higgins, J. Wolf, A. Prüss-Ustün, S. Bonjour, P. R. Hunter, L. Fewtrell, and V. Curtis. 2014. Systematic review: Hygiene and health: systematic review of handwashing practices worldwide and update of health effects. Tropical Medicine & International Health 19:906-916. The paper written by Freeman et al. evaluates the commonness of washing hands with soap in order to estimate the effect on diarrheal disease. The methods used were reviewing data of the rates of handwashing with soap and studies of diarrheal diseases in relation to hygiene. The data found was combined using multilevel modeling. From the models and data, it was found that about nineteen percent of the global population washes their hands after coming into contact with urine and feces. After accounting for unblinded studies, the rate was found to be twenty-three percent of the population washed their hands after contact with excreta. The probability that the lack of handwashing is related to diarrheal disease was found to be forty percent, but after accounting for possible bias/blindness, said probability decreased to twenty-three percent. Based on this information and reviewed data, it was deduced that the mortality rate of diarrheal disease would decrease greatly if handwashing was more widely practiced. A limitation of this study is that, although they accounted for bias in the data from collected studies, they might not have accounted for all the bias or they could have overcompensated. Another limitation might be that, even though the data was collected from scientific literature, it would have probably been better for the authors to conduct all of the research in order to make sure that each study was carried out properly and with consistency. This study is important because, although it is reasoned that handwashing reducing rates

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