Clean Hands Save Lives

Book excerpt: You may not know it, but an innovation has made our world a better place. The use of alcohol-based handrubs protects us from infectious diseases and saves millions of lives each year through safer health care. Here is the story of this revolutionary formulation, made available without patent and offered as a gift to humanity by Professor Didier Pittet and his team at Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (HUG). From bush doctors to giant pharmaceutical corporations, everyone can now produce effective handrubs, cheaply and easily. Didier Pittet’s medical odyssey has taken him to the four corners of the Earth. It also reveals a new path open to human society, one that pro- mises a radical shift from a predatory economic system to an economy of peace. Thierry Crouzet — blogger, essay writer, and novelist — is fascinated by contemporary issues located at the nexus of technology, politics, and lite- rature. A former journalist, his published works in French include Le Peuple des connecteurs [The Connected People], a reflection on our networked society; J’ai débranché [How I Unplugged], a tale of digital burnout; and La Quatrième Théorie [The Fourth Theory], a political techno-thriller.