How to Wash Your Hands with Soap and Water or Hand Sanitizers

Everyday it seems like there are more stories in the news about contagious illness, cold & flu, and even the very terrifying antibiotic resistant superbugs, or nightmare bacteria. In an article on CNN written by Ben Brumfield reported that seven patients at a Los Angeles hospital have recently caught CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae) after routine treatments for bile duct, gall bladder or pancreas. You can go directly to the full story on CNN by clicking on this link.

The author also states that CRE is part of a family of bacterial usually found in hospitals and other health care facilities that have evolved a huge resistance to antibiotics. Fortunately, you don’t get it when somebody sneezes on you. You have to touch an infected wound or stool, than touch a vulnerable part of the body - like an open wound. That’s why if doesn’t spread on the street but instead in hospitals where it can accidentally be spread by touch.

The article also goes on to encourage cleanliness as a good way to fight the spread. This is probably how the article should have stated because it is so simple and beneficial. This means washing hands, sterilizing instruments, and if you are in a hospital reminding the staff to do the same.

Washing hands regularly is extremely important to reduce the spread of germs and bacteria. The CDC suggests when and how to wash your hands to help stop spreading germs from one person to another on their website.  Here is a helpful link to the Wash your Hands page on the CDC.Gov website.

The CDC Recommends that you would Wash your Hands When:

• Before, during and after preparing food
• Before eating food
• Before and after caring for someone who is sick
• Before and after treating a cut or wound
• After using the toilet
• After changing diapers or cleaning a child that has used the toilet
• After blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
• After touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste
• After touching garbage

What is the Right Way to Wash your Hands?

• Wet you hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap
• Lather your hands by rubbing them together with soap. Be sure to lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails
• Scrubs your hands for at least 20 seconds, Need a timer? Hume the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning to end twice.
• Rinse your hands well under clean, running water
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them

What should you do if you don’t have soap and clean running water?
Use an alcohol based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of microbes on hands in some situations, but do not eliminate all types of germs.

Hand sanitizers may not be as effective when hands are visibly dirty or greasy, How do you use Hand Sanitizers?

• Apply the product to the palm of one hand (read the label to learn the correct amount)
• Rub hands together
• Rub the product over all surfaces of your hands and fingers until your hands are dry

A few simple steps in cleanliness may help reduce the spread of germs that cause illness. It is simple and not time consuming.

There are also products to clean and disinfect hard porous surfaces such as tables, seating surfaces, door knobs, etc. For more information on these products and how they work, please see our previous article “Surface Disinfection for Cleaner & Healthier Living”.