October 15th is "Global Handwashing Day". Awareness ... probably low. However, the Japan Committee for UNICEF is also promoting the "Global Handwashing Day" project, and it is said that an event will be held from October 6th to 15th with the aim of popularizing "correct handwashing" in various parts of Japan.


In addition, the Japan Committee for UNICEF published the "Handwashing White Paper" that summarizes the results of the "Handwashing Situation" survey prior to "Global Handwashing Day". The "Hand-washing situation" survey is a survey of 108 children in the third to sixth grades of elementary school in 47 prefectures nationwide as a "hand-washing survey team" to investigate the hand-washing of family and friends.


According to a report by the "Hand-washing Survey Team," 47% of the 536 people surveyed performed "correct hand-washing" with a hand-washing time of more than 20 seconds. On the other hand, 31% of the respondents did "insufficient hand washing" for 10 seconds or less. Furthermore, about 10% of the total results were "just wet hands" or "too short to distinguish".

It was also found that women are more likely to wash their hands properly than men. In particular, men aged 0 to 19 and 40 to 49 were said to have insufficient hand washing.

As Dr. Nao Hoshino of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Chiba Children's Hospital said, "It takes more than 20 seconds to wash your hands properly", to protect your health, take time to wash your hands. It seems that it is important.