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Business News of Friday, 20 March 2020

Source: www.mynigeria.com

Google creates doodle to celebrate pioneer of handwashing, Ignaz Semmelweis

Semmelweis play videoSemmelweis

American multinational technology company, Google has created a doodle to remember Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician and scientist, now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures.

Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics.

Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.

By virtue of this act, he was dubbed the "saviour of mothers."

Despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community.

Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it.

He died a mere 14 days later, at the age of 47, after being beaten by the guards, from a gangrenous wound on his right hand which might have been caused by the beating. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practised and operated using hygienic methods, with great success, Wikipedia reports

If you’re looking for a more helpful way to remember the steps without needing to consult a video, the video attached includes individual instructions for the full hand washing process.