Wellington - Teddy bears should be banned from hospital wards, doctors' surgeries and creches because they are riddled with bacteria and can make children ill, a New Zealand study recommends according to a newspaper report.
Researcher Paul Corwin, at the Christchurch School of Medicine, said his study found 90% of soft toys like teddy bears were infected with deadly faecal coliforms while most hard toys were bug-free, the New Zealand Herald reported.
In a report of his findings published in the New Zealand GP, he said that even after the soft toys were sterilised, they became infected again within a week.
But Hugh Lees, a paediatrician at Tauranga Hospital, disagreed with the findings.
"It would be a big leap to say that this is causing disease. I am not going to tell my colleagues to throw their teddies out tomorrow."
The human mouth was one of the biggest sources of infection, Lees said. "So should we stop all kissing?"
- Sapa-DPA