Washing hands

This essay really opened my eyes to the dangers of simply not washing your hands. Of course I wash my hands before eating and after the restroom but I never saw it something that important, just another everyday habit that I don't notice. By not washing hands, people could pickup diseases and transfer them to anyone who makes indirect contact with them. In a part of the essay, the author talks about how especially doctors need to pay attention to good hand cleaning because if they don't "...wash their hands well enough, Obstetricians [are] themselves to blame for childhood fever" (154). Something as simple as washing hands can prevent the spread of diseases.
Often for people, changing habits in any area is extremely difficult for a couple of reasons. One is that people could just forget that they're trying to make a change and continue with original habits. Another is that if it's a habit having to do with the body like smoking or eating constantly, then the body has adjusted to those habits and stopping or changing those habits could be very uncomfortable and tough. One can change those habits by perhaps having someone help them change. For example, I had always been a bad listener. If someone were telling me an "important" story that I wasn't very interested in, the often times I'll zone out and not hear anything they were talking about. My roommates have pointed that out to me and are trying to help me with it.