How you help science?

Infectious diseases as a field is about how to effectively prevent the spread of diseases. There are many ways we could do this, from vaccination to quarantine. Each disease has its own challenges. Local authorities and experts have to decide on which method would best be used to contain and eliminate an outbreak.

But, how do we know which way works? Or that method is enough?

Because we cannot experiment on reality, scientists run computer simulations on what are called mathematical models. Mathematical models simulate what we know so far about the disease and how humans contact each other. From this information, we can run different scenarios and draw ideas on how to contain the outbreak.

Your data will help us make models about hand washing interventions. We have a lot of information about how people wash their hands in the hospital, but information about handwashing in the general public has been notoriously hard to collect and few and far between.