Your cellphone is your personal world. The risk of sharing it can be great, very great. A small but significant study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) found that 81.8 per cent of the 386 mobile phones they surveyed showed bacterial growth on them. This was comparable to the pathogens they found in hand swabs of individuals, 80 per cent of which showed bacterial growth.
Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Faggan Singh Kulaste gave this information in response to a question in Lok Sabha.
According to the study, the risk of infection spreading through sharing mobile handsets is very high, unless steps are taken to ensure hygiene. The ICMR has already included mobile phones in the list of hospital-acquired infections. While researchers say that more studies need to be conducted on the hazards of mobiles as an agent of spreading infection and how to reduce it, the preliminary measures include not taking them to intensive care units and not sharing handsets without proper cleaning.
Meanwhile, another set of studies show that apart from the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs among humans and livestock, the reasons for increased antibiotic resistance in India is inadequate sanitation and infection control practices in health care settings.
