The importance of hand hygiene education on primary schoolgirls’ absence due to upper respiratory infections in Saudi Arabia: A cluster randomized controlled trial
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVES: To quantify the reduction in absence due to upper respiratory infections (URIs) among primary schoolgirls attending Riyadh's schools after delivering a hand hygiene workshop intervention over a period of 5 weeks. Methods: A cluster randomized trial was conducted among girls attending 4 primary schools between January and March 2018. The participants attended a hand hygiene workshop. The schoolgirls' absences were followed up for 5 weeks. Incidence rate, percentage of absence days, and absence rate were calculated for total and URIs absences. Result: Total number of participating schoolgirls was 496. Upper respiratory infections accounted for 15.3% of absence episodes. Schoolgirls lost 521 days of school and 19.4% of them were URIs-related. Absence rate due to URIs were 12.4 and 23.4 as well as 5.62 and 11.72 per 100 schoolgirls in the control (CG) and experimental (EG) groups, respectively. Percentage of absence days were lower in the experimental group (CG: 0.86% and 1.39% versus EG: 0.39% and 0.72%). Incidence rates of absence due to URIs were 0.54 and 1.02 in CG versus 0.24 and 0.51 in EG per 100 schoolgirls per day. Conclusion: There could be further reduction in school absences if education was accompanied by hand soap dissemination. The study could serve as a pilot for major studies in the future. Sustainability of the intervention can be tested in studies with longer durations.
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Providing mothers with soap reduced diarrhea by 90% in children, as well as respiratory tract infections in school-children, and improved long-term hand hygienic practices.
“Providing mothers with soap reduced diarrhea by 90% in children, as well as respiratory tract infections in school-children (Alzaher et al., 2018), and improved longterm hand hygienic practices (Wilson and Chandler, 1993;Cairncross et al., 2005).”
From A Systematic Review of Water and Gender Interlinkages: Assessing the Intersection With Health (2020) · cites this paper as Alzaher et al., 2018
Statistics are not reported in the Alzaher et al. (2018) study.
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From A Systematic Review of Water and Gender Interlinkages: Assessing the Intersection With Health (2020) · cites this paper as Alzaher et al. (2018)
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“T h e W a te r-G e n d e r N e xu s a n d H e a lth TABLE 1 | Continued References Country Study design Sample size Health component WASH outcome Gender outcome Sex disaggregated Conclusion Al-Delaimy et al. (2014) Malaysia Cross-sectional 498 school children aged 6–12 years old Intestinal parasitic infections Access…”
BackgroundInfluential
- Authors
- Alzaher, A. A., Almudarra, S. S., Mustafa, M. H., & Gosadi, I. M.
- Affiliations
- King Saud University (SA)
- Corresponding author
- Alzaher, Abrar A.
- Venue
- Saudi Medical Journal
- Publisher
- Armed Forces Medical Services
- Published
- 2018-10
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1044-1049
- ISSN
- 0379-5284 (ISSN-L)
- 1658-3175
- PMC
- PMC6201029
- OpenAlex
- W2896361525
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 2.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Saudi Medical Journal (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Emergency Medical Services › Pediatric health and respiratory diseases
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › School Health and Nursing Education
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Infection Control in Healthcare
- Keywords
- hand hygiene education, upper respiratory tract infection, school absenteeism, school health interventions, Riyadh
- MeSH terms
- Absenteeism, Child, Health Education, Humans, Respiratory Tract Infections, Saudi Arabia, Schools, Students, Cluster Analysis, Hand Hygiene
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