Turns out we've been washing our hands all wrong

Now, this isn’t something we expected to learn today. According to The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 84 percent of us don’t wash our hands correctly.

The health organisation estimates that a third of cases of diarrhoea and a sixth of respiratory infections could be prevented by thoroughly washing our hands.

Yet a large majority of us don’t scrub for the recommended amount of time. According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, we should wash our hands for 20 seconds, the same amount of time it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday To You’ twice.

However, according to the health organisation, nearly two-thirds of us don’t wash our hands before eating and half don’t soap up after touching animals.

President of the health organisation Ash Soni told the Daily Mail: “We don’t wash our hands often enough for long enough to get rid of the bacteria that can cause illnesses.”

He continued: “Even when we remain unaffected by the bugs we carry, if we don’t wash our hands we can transmit infections which then become a real problem for those who are more vulnerable, such as children and the elderly, who may then need to be prescribed antibiotics.”

Health experts warn that if we continue to rely on antibiotics for preventable illnesses, superbugs will cause more fatalities than cancer by 2050.

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