Hand Hygiene for Children – Beaufort South Carolina The Island News

Hand hygiene is very important during COVID, cold and flu season. Every three minutes, a child puts a hand in its nose or mouth. Since some viruses and bacteria can live two hours or more on surfaces like cafeteria tables and doorknobs that children touch throughout the day, it’s easy to see how essential clean hands are. to avoid disease. Keeping your hands clean is essential to avoid getting sick and spreading germs. The common cold is responsible for nearly 22 million lost school days each year, making it now an important time to remind families of good hand hygiene.

There are plenty of unwashed hands. Only one in five of us do the job correctly, according to environmental microbiologists. Everyone needs to be sure they understand how to wash properly and use alcohol-based instant hand sanitizers. Everyone, especially children, can benefit from an effective hand hygiene reminder:

Tell the children that clean hands are important in preventing disease and the spread of germs.

Show children how to wash their hands properly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instructions:

Wet your hands with clean, lukewarm water and apply soap.

Rub hands together to create a lather and rub all surfaces (including between fingers and under fingernails) for 20 seconds.

Rinse hands under running water.

Dry hands thoroughly.

Help kids stay clean wherever they are. When soap and water aren’t available, alcohol-based instant hand sanitizers – like PURELL® – effectively kill 99.99% of the most common germs that can cause disease – and there’s no has no evidence that germs become resistant to alcohol as a result. Show children how to properly use hand sanitizers: Apply alcohol-based hand sanitizer to the palm of one hand. Rub your hands – so that the product covers all surfaces of the hands and fingers – until the hands are dry.

An antiseptic, hand sanitizer, or hand sanitizer is an adjunct or alternative to hand washing with soap and water. Many preparations are available, including gel, foam and liquid solutions. The active ingredient in hand sanitizers can be isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol), ethanol, n-propanol, or povidone-iodine. Inactive ingredients in alcohol rubs generally include a thickening agent such as polyacrylic acid for alcohol gels, humectants such as glycerin for liquid rubs, propylene glycol, and essential oils from plants. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are more effective at killing microorganisms than soaps and do not dry out hands as much.

Common alcohol-free, leave-in hand sanitizers use either low concentrations of cationic nitrogenous surfactant, benzalkonium chloride, the chlorinated aromatic compound triclosan, or povidone-iodine. Some products claim to kill microorganisms naturally, although these claims are not supported by any FDA monograph. Always research and buy hand sanitizers made in the USA. All hand sanitizer products require National Drug Code designation in the United States. Alcohol disinfectants generally kill most bacteria and fungi and stop some viruses. Alcohol-based disinfectants containing at least 70% alcohol (mainly ethyl alcohol) kill 99.9% of bacteria on hands 30 seconds after application and 99.99% to 99.999% in one minute. When hands aren’t visibly dirty, the CDC and many other global public health authorities recommend alcohol-based hand sanitizers as an acceptable alternative to soap and water for hand hygiene.

Call back, call back, call back. Encourage children to wash their hands frequently throughout the day, before eating, and after using the bathroom and playing outside. Check with schools to see if older children can carry a travel-sized container of hand sanitizer in their backpack, for quick hand cleaning when soap and water are not available.

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