Hands Don't Transmit "Over 80" of Disease
The Claim
Over 80% of diseases are transmitted by hands.
News posted on
Emerging story
In summer 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, social media users began recirculating the claim that 80% of diseases are spread by hands.
Misbar’s Analysis
On July 7, 2020, Nonso Bobby Egemba, a Nigerian doctor known as Aproko Doctor on social media, tweeted an old claim that 80 percent of diseases are transmitted by our hands. This was then retweeted and shared on social media and also published in The Guardian.
Misbar discovered that diseases are transmitted in a multitude of ways. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), infectious diseases result from the interaction of agent, host, and environment. Disease transmission occurs when the agent leaves its host through a portal of exit, is conveyed by some mode of transmission, and enters another port of entry to another host. This is called the chain of infection. An example would be a respiratory virus that travels from person to person. The person is the host to the virus. The portal of exit could be the respiratory tract. The mode of transportation could happen in a variety of ways, such as direct contract like hand to hand contact or through the air. The port of entry is then how the disease enters the other person (who is the susceptible host).
Aproko Doctor is suggesting that 80 percent of the time, the mode of transportation of a disease is our hands. However, beyond transmission by our hands, an infectious disease could also travel through kissing, sexual intercourse, or droplets in the air. Whooping cough is an example of a disease transmitted from an infectious person to someone else by droplet spread. You can also spread diseases through an indirect mode of transportation such as through the air, or through food, or water just to name a few examples. Mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks also carry infectious diseases and can serve as modes of transportation.
When it comes to infectious diseases, Hepatitis B is one of the most common diseases in the world. According to the CDC, approximately 250 million people worldwide have Hepatitis B. It can be spread when blood, semen, or other body fluid from a person infected with the disease enters the body of another person. This can happen with sharing needles, having sex, or passed from an infected mother to her baby. Another very common disease is malaria. Malaria is spread by mosquito bites. Needless to say, there is no evidence to support the idea that 80 percent of our diseases are transmitted through our hands
Diseases are transmitted in multiple ways with no evidence to support the majority are transmitted through our hands.
