How often do you wash your towel? Some people wash once a week, while some, once a year. The towel is a fertile breeding ground for millions of microbes, especially those found on human skin and on the gut. No wonder the towel is one of the objects that facilitate fecal-oral contamination (literally connecting the two ends of the gut). Worse still, most people keep towels in the bathroom (near the toilet). Every flush of the toilet sends mist with millions of microbes, ranging from H.pylori, salmonella and other deadly bacteria and viruses. When you wash your hands ready for a meal, and dry them with your body towel, there's high chance you are directly ingesting your fecal matter, or, if in a shared lavatory, someone else's faeces. Unless cleaned well, viruses such as human papillomavirus (causes warts, anal cancer and cervical cancer) can be transmitted when towels are shared with infected individuals. So, what to do? 1. Launder towels once a week. 2. Use hot water and det...
The rapid growth of cultural tourism is undeniably evident, and this, according to the UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai, “comes with increased responsibility to protect our cultural and natural assets, the very foundation of our societies and our civilizations”. Major stakeholders at the just concluded 2nd UNWTO/UNESCO World Conference on Tourism and Culture Muscat, held in the capital city of the Sultanate of Oman on 11th-12th December 2017, reaffirmed to build and strengthen partnerships between the tourism and culture sectors and enhance their role in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This, under the Muscat Declaration on Tourism and Culture : Fostering Sustainable Development. Image credit: UNWTO 1. Strengthen the synergies between tourism and culture and advance the contribution of cultural tourism to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and the 17 SDGs; Under this commitment, five underlying pointers are listed among them promoting t...