Abstract: Raising community awareness towards more healthy daily practices undoubtedly is very noble. Definitely, there is mounting increase in in the number of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) users in Al-Ahsa, KSA. Unfortunately, there is a misleading sense of security among users of that machine, being unaware of the fact that germs are everywhere! To address this, this descriptive comparative study aimed to characterize the bacterial load, if any that is harboring the keypads and touch screens of the ATMs and compared its type(s) and susceptibility to those harboring the flush buttons of the toilets that was randomly selected from different regions of Al-Ahsa. The research team addressed a still viable question: Why hand-sanitizers are only available in the outpatient clinics of health care facilities to deliver antimicrobial protection for health care providers? Is not ATMs more worthy of the presence of such hand-sanitizers? The unexpected results of this study will certainly shed some light for care providers fighting communicable diseases that cost the Saudi economy millions of Riyals annually.
Keywords: Automated Teller Machines, Hand sanitization, environmental screening & communicable diseases.
Title: At Your Fingertips, Get Money and More: The Story of Acquired Teller Microorganisms
Author: Khaled Zahran, Hussein Al-Naghmoush, Daham Al-Shemri, Aly Alfuridan, AbdelRahman AlKadhy
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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