Project Summary
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis is a Hungarian physician born in 1818 and active at the Vienna General Hospital. He was being troubled by childbed fever: A deadly disease affecting women that give birth at the hospital. In the early 1840s at the Vienna General Hospital, the disease was killing as many as 10% of the women giving birth at the hospital. In 1847 the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis makes a breakthrough discovery: He discovers handwashing. Contaminated hands was a major cause of childbed fever and by enforcing handwashing at the hospital he saved hundreds of lives. We’re going to analyze the data to find out what made Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis discover the importance of handwashing.
Project Overview: Utilized Python to analyze the historical data related to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’s pioneering work on handwashing and its impact on reducing puerperal fever in maternity wards. The goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of handwashing in preventing infections through statistical analysis and visualization.
- DELIVERABLES
- Utilized Python to preprocess and clean historical medical data, addressing missing values and ensuring data consistency.
- Engineered features such as infection rates per 100 patients to provide a clear metric for analysis.
- Conducted exploratory data analysis (EDA) to uncover trends in infection rates before and after the introduction of handwashing protocols.
- Developed line charts to visualize changes in infection rates over time, clearly showing the impact of handwashing practices.
- Created box plots to compare infection rates in periods before and after handwashing was implemented, highlighting significant reductions.
- Demonstrated proficiency in Python programming for data analysis, utilizing libraries like Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, and Seaborn.
- ANALYSIS IMPACT
- The analysis of Dr. Semmelweis's handwashing protocols demonstrates the significant impact of handwashing on reducing infection rates in maternity wards. By leveraging statistical methods and data visualization, this project highlights the effectiveness of handwashing in improving public health and validates historical claims through data-driven insights.