Infections: You have the power in your hands

Our environments at home, the office and other public places such as hospitals, shops, busses and train are teeming with germs. Illness-causing germs can survive on hard surfaces for many hours and even days. Germs also love to settle on telephone keypads and handsets, TV remotes and door handles; in fact any surface that people touch regularly.

You have the power to either spread these dangerous germs or to prevent the spread by finding out all you can about hand hygiene.

What is hand hygiene?

Hand hygiene is a general term applied to the use of water and soap or an antimicrobial solution to wash and clean hands with. When performed correctly, hand hygiene helps to reduce the risk of spreading infectious organisms between patients and healthcare workers in hospitals, between co-workers in offices and even in the home between members of a household and their pets! Harmful germs are often the cause of colds and the flu, stomach upsets such as diarrhoea, vomiting and other more serious illnesses caused by super bugs. Washing hands regularly is the single most important hand hygiene step in fighting the spread of these germs.

How to wash your hands?

Here’s how to do it properly:

• • Wet your hands with clean, warm running water

• • Apply a small amount of soap (plain or antimicrobial) to the palms of your hands and rub together

• • Rub the back of your hands, wrists, fingers and thumbs and the bits in between

• • Rub your nails on your palms

• • Rinse with clean running water

• • Dry with a clean towel or paper towel and also use a paper towel to turn off the tap and open the washroom door

• • Use a moisturising lotion to keep the skin on your hands from drying out; dry skin can lead to skin damage and an increased risk for the transmission of germs and infection.

When to wash your hands

Wash your hands:

• • Before and after preparing and eating food

• • After going to the toilet. According to UNICEF, hand washing with soap before eating and after using the toilet has cut deaths from diarrhoea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter

• • Before and after tending a sick person, dressing a wound or coming into contact with their body fluids (blood, saliva, vomit, etc)

• • Before and after picking up a baby or infant and changing a nappy

• • After blowing your nose especially if you have a cold or the flu

• • After handling animals and pets

• • After emptying the rubbish bin

• • After working in the garden

• • Whenever your hands look, feel or are dirty.

What to do if you don’t have soap and clean, running water

Rub your hands with an alcohol-containing hand sanitising preparation (liquid, gel or foam). Alcohol rub sanitisers are known killers of bacteria, multi-drug resistant bacteria, tuberculosis germs, some (not all) viruses and fungi. Wet or cover both hands thoroughly with the liquid, gel or foam and rub the front and back of both hands and between fingers for approximately 30 seconds until the liquid, foam or gel is dry.

Many people in low-income communities use ash or soil to clean their hands. Ash, like soap, is also a disinfecting agent but ash and soil should only be used as an absolute last resort in the absence of soap and water.

 

Sources

 

Hand hygiene: Why, how and when? Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Hand_Hygiene_Why_How_and_When_Brochure.pdf
Hand washing. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing
What is hand hygiene? Retrieved from: http://www.handhygiene.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=108