Hand Hygiene-its Significance

We all know that the spread of communicable diseases is by direct contact. Hand-to hand contact is probably the quickest and the easiest mode of disease transmission. Hand hygiene is an important aspect of disease spread; still we are often careless about it.

A powerful and highly significant strategy in disease prevention and control is the maintenance of a good hygiene. Special attention should be given to hand hygiene for the establishment of safety of our health.

Certain conditions where hand hygiene requires special consideration are:

Ø Handling the newborns

Ø Before feeding a baby

Ø Diapering the baby

Ø While cuddling the baby

Ø After sneezing or coughing during illness

Ø After travelling in public transport

Ø After handling household waste or garbage

Ø For medical professionals, while examining the patients.

  Certain diseases are seen to be transmitted mostly by lack of good hand hygiene.

Important Diseases:

Bacterial Infections- like typhoid, meningitis

Skin Infections- scabies, fungal infection

Food Borne Infections - eg. amoebiasis, infective gastroenteritis, etc.

Viral Infections- Chicken pox, herpes etc. are seen to occur due to poor hand hygiene

Eye Infections-  eg. Conjunctivitis

Chest Infections- instances of common cold are spread mostly due to lack of good hand hygiene

Maintaining good hand hygiene will not only protect us from being affected and being vulnerable to various illnesses, but it is also, a sign and mark of civilized individual. If we give a little consideration to proper hygiene, we will be preventing the onset of most of the commonly encountered illnesses in our daily life. We are well versed with the phrase-‘Prevention is better than cure’. So let’s adoptive preventive measures rather than waiting for the illness to affect us and then seek treatment.