With World Hand Hygiene Day just round the corner, let’s lather it on with the rest of the world and practice good hygiene! I’m sure you’ve seen posters plastered all over walls of toilets, hospital wards and health bulletins in recent years screaming at you to wash your hands, what with all the pandemics threatening to pile germs down our backs.
It seems so simple and obvious to just wash one’s hands after a meal, or after using the bathroom, or basically after touching something dirty. But do we really understand what this means, and the criticality of it all?
Imagine someone down with a cold, sneezing and coughing away. He goes into a lift, presses a button and goes out. The next person goes in, touches the same button, and so on. The number of fingers that got into contact with that contaminated button, and roaming around touching many other little things, then back to their faces, is unbelievable. The journey of germs and bacteria is indeed a long and flighty one, hopping from one person to the next like little parasites. However, it can be kept to a minimum if each individual puts in that extra effort to keep their hands clean.
And it really isn’t that difficult. Here are seven easy steps from the Health Promotion Board and Tan Tock Seng Hospital that will leave you with spotless hands. (And it only takes a minute or two!)
Seeing how simple it is to keep germs at bay, there really is no excuse for dirty, grimy hands. And I’m sure you don’t want to be caught by the new health “spies”, now that the University of Florida has come up with a special hand-washing detector, called HyGreen.
Currently aimed at hospitals where hygiene is of top-most priority, these detectors are able to sense if a medical staff has washed his hands before attending to the patient. When a staff enters the patient’s ward, he will wash up and run his hands under a HyGreen sensor that will activate a green LED light on his ID badge if his hands are clean. The system also has a monitor by the patient’s bed that sends out infrared and acoustic signals to the staff ID badge verifying the green light is illuminated. If the staff has not washed his hands, the badge will vibrate, alerting him to do so. When this happens, an alert will also be sent to a database which hospital infection staff can monitor.
You can read more about this innovation here:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/hand-washing-tech.html
Though still relatively new, when it does make its way to our little island, I’m pretty sure this technology might just boost hygiene practices, and hopefully confine the spread of infectious diseases like the common cold, gastrointestinal illnesses, diarrhoea and pneumonia to a minimum.
So if you haven’t gotten into the habit of washing your hands the proper way or often enough, let this international health campaign be a start to wash away your old habits and kick in some soapy new ones. Make this your new daily regime, not just every 5th May, and you’ll see the difference some clean fingers can do. So pop that sanitizer into your bag, and you’re good to go.
It seems so simple and obvious to just wash one’s hands after a meal, or after using the bathroom, or basically after touching something dirty. But do we really understand what this means, and the criticality of it all?
Imagine someone down with a cold, sneezing and coughing away. He goes into a lift, presses a button and goes out. The next person goes in, touches the same button, and so on. The number of fingers that got into contact with that contaminated button, and roaming around touching many other little things, then back to their faces, is unbelievable. The journey of germs and bacteria is indeed a long and flighty one, hopping from one person to the next like little parasites. However, it can be kept to a minimum if each individual puts in that extra effort to keep their hands clean.
And it really isn’t that difficult. Here are seven easy steps from the Health Promotion Board and Tan Tock Seng Hospital that will leave you with spotless hands. (And it only takes a minute or two!)
Seeing how simple it is to keep germs at bay, there really is no excuse for dirty, grimy hands. And I’m sure you don’t want to be caught by the new health “spies”, now that the University of Florida has come up with a special hand-washing detector, called HyGreen.
Currently aimed at hospitals where hygiene is of top-most priority, these detectors are able to sense if a medical staff has washed his hands before attending to the patient. When a staff enters the patient’s ward, he will wash up and run his hands under a HyGreen sensor that will activate a green LED light on his ID badge if his hands are clean. The system also has a monitor by the patient’s bed that sends out infrared and acoustic signals to the staff ID badge verifying the green light is illuminated. If the staff has not washed his hands, the badge will vibrate, alerting him to do so. When this happens, an alert will also be sent to a database which hospital infection staff can monitor.
You can read more about this innovation here:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/hand-washing-tech.html
Though still relatively new, when it does make its way to our little island, I’m pretty sure this technology might just boost hygiene practices, and hopefully confine the spread of infectious diseases like the common cold, gastrointestinal illnesses, diarrhoea and pneumonia to a minimum.
So if you haven’t gotten into the habit of washing your hands the proper way or often enough, let this international health campaign be a start to wash away your old habits and kick in some soapy new ones. Make this your new daily regime, not just every 5th May, and you’ll see the difference some clean fingers can do. So pop that sanitizer into your bag, and you’re good to go.
0 comments: