These are described in detail in the Methods section.
ReviewEffect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review
Section snippets
Search strategy
We aimed to identify all studies published in English up to the end of 2002 relating handwashing to the risk of infectious intestinal or diarrhoeal diseases in the community. Medline, CAB Abstracts, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were systematically searched using appropriate textwords and thesaurus terms for papers relating to handwashing, use of soap, as well as disease terms such as diarrhoea, typhoid, enteric, cholera, shigellosis, dysentery, and mortality. Searches were
Principal findings
We found only 17 studies suitable for review offering 20 data points. Most were of poor quality and the range of results was considerable. Taken as awhole, however, the literature points to an important role for handwashing in preventing diarrhoeal disease. We found that interventions to promote washing hands with soap were associated with a decrease in risk of diarrhoeal disease of 47% (95% CI 24–63%). Handwashing was also associated with a 48–59% reduced risk of more severe outcomes.
Estimating potential reductions in mortality
Good
Search strategy and selection criteria
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