News & Views

Every year, 22nd March is celebrated as World Water Day to create awareness about the urgency and need to make clean drinking water and good sanitation and hygiene facilities available to all. Every year it focuses on a special theme and the theme for World Water Day 2017 is ‘Why Waste Water?’. It encourages us…

Almost one third of all deaths from foodborne diseases are in children under the age of 5 years, despite the fact that they make up only 9% of the global population. This is among the findings of the World Health Organization (WHO) report “Estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases”. The report, which estimates…

Learning about illness is unlike learning about other things: it requires children to reason about objects like “germs” that they can’t see or touch. Although children have some difficulty of grasping the concept of illness and how illness is transmitted, children begin to learn about it in the preschool years. At first, they acquire very…

For my fourth-grade science fair project, I tested different soaps to see which ones were the most effective at keeping my hands clean. Now, nearly 20 years later as a microbiology doctoral candidate, I can’t help but think, “Ugh, the fourth-grade me was such an amateur scientist!” My experiment lacked obvious control groups and ultimately…

Why must we fight for food safety? Contamination, be it deliberate or accidental, of food produce has extremely significant implications in the 21st Century. We might firstly consider food contamination as stemming from three principle motivations: 1.Financial gain This instance represents the deliberate contamination of food and beverages to maximise profit which is ultimately an…

Food companies that receive FDA warning letters have 15 working days to respond with an outline the specific things they are doing to correct violations. If company officials cannot complete all corrections before they respond, they must explain the reason for the delay and indicate when and how violations bill be corrected. In a warning…

The pungent compound 6-gingerol, a constituent of ginger, stimulates an enzyme contained in saliva – an enzyme which breaks down foul-smelling substances. It thus ensures fresh breath and a better aftertaste. Citric acid, on the other hand, increases the sodium ion content of saliva, making salty foods taste less salty. To find out more about…

The consequences of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) reach well beyond patients’ physical health, souring social relationships, and leading some healthcare providers (HCP) to distance themselves from affected patients, according to a qualitative, systematic review published in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).…

They’re everywhere in hospitals, travellers’ backpacks and the aisles of pharmacies in winter, but do we really need to use alcohol-based hand sanitisers? And what should we make of the marketing claims they’re needed to kill germs? Our research found we touch our face up to 23 times each hour and, of these, ten touches…

Keeping hands clean through improved hand hygiene is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others. On Global Handwashing Day, the CDC Foundation is pleased to announce a new phase in a program aimed at improving hand hygiene to combat infection. On any given day,…