How to Wash Your Hands Correctly

August 22, 2022

Tricks to Show Your Kids: How to Wash Your Hands Correctly

Clean Hands Save Lives!

Remember when you were little, and your parents told you to wash your hands? Well, they were right to do so!

It turns out a square inch of skin on our hands can be home to an estimated 1,500 bacteria. Some of these are beneficial to us, but the ones that are not can really make us sick.

Bacteria and viruses are microscopic, which means we can’t see them with the naked eye. While some germs peacefully co-exist with us, most are foreign bodies we pick up from handling everyday items like our cell phones, door handles, shopping carts, and even our toothbrush.

The simplest and best way to prevent bacteria-related illnesses and other infectious diseases is to wash your hands with soap and water.

How Washing Your Hands Can Prevent Illnesses

Washing your hands with soap helps remove germs. Removing harmful bacteria from your hands can help prevent infections.

We are always using our hands even without realizing it. If we touch our eyes, mouth, or nose with dirty hands, germs can quickly enter our system.

Here are a few facts about how having clean hands can reduce illness:

Proper handwashing can reduce diarrheal disease-related deaths by up to 50%
Researchers estimate that regular hand washes can help prevent one million deaths a year
Washing your hands can reduce the risk of respiratory infections by 16%
Contaminated hands are one of the leading causes of foodborne disease outbreaks

While the most common form of hand sanitizing is soap and water, alcohol-based gel hand sanitizers have proven to be an excellent way to reduce the overall absenteeism in schools due to infection.

The Proper Way to Wash Your Hands

Altus Emergency Centers is committed to safeguarding the health of the community we serve.

There are many benefits to learning the correct way to wash your hands, including:

It reduces the number of diarrhea cases by 23-40%
It lowers diarrheal illnesses in patients with a weakened immune system by 58%
It reduces the spread of respiratory diseases like colds by up to 21%
It can help reduce schoolchildren’s absenteeism due to gastrointestinal illness by as much as 57%
It can help protect one out of every three young children from getting sick with diarrhea, and almost one out of five young kids from contracting respiratory infections like pneumonia
It may help improve early child development

Does Washing Your Hands Kill COVID-19?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, practicing proper handwashing techniques has helped save lives.

According to the CDC:

“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a frequently touched surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes with unwashed hands. Although this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, we are still learning more about how it spreads. Cleaning visibly dirty surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for preventing COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses caused by viruses.”

An easy way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to learn to wash your hands well and when needed. Let’s get to know when we should wash our hands.

Together We Can Prevent the Spread of COVID-19!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends you wash your hands during these times:

Before, during, and after preparing food
Before and after eating food
Before and after tending a cut or wound
After using the toilet
After changing a baby’s diaper
After helping a child use the bathroom
After sneezing, blowing your nose, or coughing
After touching an animal, its food or waste
After handling pet food or pet treats
After touching garbage

Know Where to Go in Case of an Emergency.

FIND AN ER

5 Steps to Wash Your Hands

Wet your hands
Lather with plenty of soap. Lather the back of your hands, in between your fingers, and under your nails
Scrub at least 20 seconds
Rinse off the soap with water
Dry your hands