KARACHI, June 6: Washing hands regularly with soap reduces the chances of death among children, who are at a risk of contracting diarrhoea , according to a Pakistani study published in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Under the study - carried out by Stephen P Luby, Mubina Agboatwala, John Painter, Arshad Altaf, Ward L Billhimer and Robert M Hoekstra - the use of soap was advised in 36 low-income neighbourhoods in urban squatter settlements in Karachi; and the effect of its intervention on the incidence of diarrhoea was studied.

The initiative, dubbed "The Karachi Soap Health Study" was carried out in adjoining multiethnic squatter settlements in central Karachi - Bilal, Manzoor and Mujahid colonies - in collaboration with an NGO, the Health Oriented Preventive Education (Hope).

Field workers visited households at least once every week from April 15, 2002, to April 5, 2003. They promoted hand washing with soap after defecating, before preparing food, eating, and feeding a child, in eligible households - having at least two children younger than 15 years and one younger than five years.

Towards the end of the study, it was discovered that children younger than 15 years, living in households that were advised to wash hands with plain soap, had a 53 per cent lower incidence of diarrhoea as compared to children living in control neighbourhoods.

Infants living in households that were requested to wash hands with plain soap stayed ill for 39 per cent fewer days as compared to children in the control group.

Similar reductions were recorded in the case of households that were advised to wash hands with antibacterial soap. In a setting in which diarrhoea was a leading cause of child death, improvement in hand washing in the household reduced the incidence of diarrhoea among children, concluded the study.

However, children at a greatest risk of death are those younger than one year - too young to wash their own hands.

The study report said that in the target communities in which diarrhoea was the leading cause of death among children, water was heavily contaminated with faecal organisms. Though no provisions were made for clean drying of hands, the incidence of diarrhoea was halved.