LEWISTON – A five-minute video created to teach people a better way to cough – in your sleeve rather than your hands – is spreading like an airborne flu-bug.

More than 3,000 people have logged onto Lewiston doctor Ben Lounsbury’s Web site, www.coughsafe.com, to download his video since the summer’s start. Now, with the aid the Maine Medical Association, Lounsbury hopes to get his short film, “Why Don’t We Do It In Our Sleeves?” into schools, workplaces and homes nationwide.

The doctor has submitted his film to the American Medical Association for its endorsement.

“I’m waiting to see what they’ll do with it,” Lounsbury said.

Meanwhile, he’s trying to get out the movie’s message: Germs spread when someone coughs or sneezes into their hands.

From there the germs go to door knobs, telephones and refrigerator handles, places where they can be easily picked up by someone else and spread.

The video makes its point with Monty Python-style humor.

Among the bits are people safely coughing in slow motion, showing a variety of ways to cover a mouth with a sleeve. Another segment shows judges grading several people, Olympics-style, in their technique.

Also featured are Silly Putty germs.

“Some people might watch it for the fun of it,” Lounsbury said. But it’s serious, too.

On the Internet site, Google Video, the film has gotten lost among less practical pursuits, he said.

“It won’t ever make their top 100,” he said.

Lounsbury spent months making the video, enlisting friends to act and shooting inside the Lewiston hospitals where he works.

He began showing the movie to family and friends last December. This summer it was screened at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.

On Wednesday, it was scheduled to be shown to a gathering of Maine experts on bird flu.

With each screening, Lounsbury hopes to reach a larger audience.

He hopes to make sneezing or coughing into one’s sleeve instinctive. At the same time he hopes to make use of one’s hands taboo.

It’s a struggle, though.

Even the filmmaker/doctor remembers to cough into his sleeve about one out of every nine times.

During a telephone interview, Lounsbury experienced a brief lapse and followed a cough with a flash of his hands.

“You caught me,” he said with a small laugh. “I’m going to wash my hands right away.”