Health professionals who are at a loss as to how to reduce killer bugs such as MRSA rampaging through British hospitals might find a trip to Karachi worthwhile.
There they will find poor families in deprived neighbourhoods who are eliminating diseases such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and impetigo just by washing their hands with soap.
This simple practice immediately halved the rate of pneumonia and diarrhoea among children in the community. Bathing with soap also reduced rates of impetigo by a third. The research team gave away the soap to all participants.
This revelation will naturally come as a shock to doctors, who assume it’s a sign of homosexuality to scrub up between inspecting patients. Or perhaps they have to pay for their own soap.