The usefulness of hand washing during field training to prevent acute respiratory illness in a military training facility

Kim, Ho Seung; Ko, Ryoung Eun; Ji, Misuk; Lee, Ju-Hyung; Lee, Chang-Seop; Lee, Hyun

There are several limitations to this study. First, we did not obtain information about the individual behavior of hand washing. Therefore, there might be lack of observed compliance with the hand washing technique described. However, since the hand washing in the field was performed under the control of a squad commander, this effect might not be significant. Another limitation is that this study was not fully controlled. For ethical reasons, we did not compare either hand washing group to a strictly non-hand washing group; specifically, after noticing that hand washing during field training was only implemented in 1 battalion, we implemented hand washing in the other battalion beginning from the third week. Therefore, in the near future, we will need a well-controlled and better designed prospective study at military training centers. Last, due to lack of tap water, we modified the hand washing methods used during field training. Recently, more convenient methods such as alcohol-based hand cleansing have been adopted and have shown their effectiveness in many clinical settings, including those at military training facilities, [8, 20, [24] [25] [26] [27] and may be applicable to our study population. Thus, future studies are needed to demonstrate whether other methods such as alcohol-based hand cleansing during field training further decrease ARI incidence at military training facilities.