Handwashing- Why it is so important this time of year
By: Kristin Penner
Wild West District Director
If you haven’t caught any illnesses being spread around this time of year, count yourself lucky. You can more than likely contribute that to proper handwashing. Good job.
Handwashing with soap and warm water is the BEST way to stay healthy. Many illnesses are spread due to people not washing their hands. Even though you can’t see them germs are everywhere and spread easily.
Germs spread from person to person and surface to people when:
- You touch your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands
- Prepare food and drinks with unwashed hands
- Touch surfaces or objects others have touched with unwashed hands
- Cough, blow your nose, sneeze into your hands, and then touch other people’s hands or surfaces.
When to wash your hands:
- After coughing or blowing your hose
- Before preparing foods
- After using the restroom
- Before and after caring for someone else who is sick
The proper way to wash
- Wet your hands with clean warm water
- Lather your hands with soap. Make sure to clean between your fingers, under your fingernails (lots of germs hide here), backs of your hands, and wrists.
- Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. If you sing the Happy Birthday song twice this will be long enough.
- Rinse with warm water. Making sure you get all the suds off from the soap.
- Dry your hand using a clean towel. Make sure you are changing your hand towels often. These also hold germs and can be passed on.
If you find yourself in a situation where there could be germs and don’t have access to soap and water the next best alternative would be to use hand sanitizer. Make sure it contains at least 60% alcohol to kill germs.
For more information visit:
https://www.cdc.gov/clean-hands/about/index.html
