A study found that people are more likely to wash their hands after using the bathroom only if they are shamed into it.... or think they are being watched.

Hand-washing is the cheapest way of controlling disease but the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that less than one-third of men and two-thirds of women wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet.

Health authorities around the world are trying to get people to wash their hands to help slow the spread of the H1N1 swine flu.

Hand-washing could save more than a million lives a year and it can help prevent the spread of viral infections like flu and sickness and diarrhea bugs like norovirus and rotavirus.

The researchers studied the behavior of a quarter of a million people using toilets over 32 days.

The study showed that with no reminders, 32 percent of men and 64 percent of women used soap.