The World Health Organization says that "Diarrhoea kills two million children every year! The simple hygiene habit of washing hands with soap would cut this number in half." These are the global statistics. It is estimated that 25% of Ghanaian children under age-five die of diarrhoea, a preventable hygiene-related disease. That is bad news.
A community Water and Sanitation Agency source maintains that the rate at which deaths due to diarrhoeal-related diseases occur in Ghana could be reduced by half through effective hand-washing with soap. That is good news.
It is further estimated that 80% of diseases reported at out-patient-departments of our hospitals, like malaria, cholera, worms and diarrhoea, are sanitation-related. If this trend continues, it could jeopardize the sustainability of the National Health Insurance Scheme. That is bad news indeed.
Last Wednesday, October 15 was the first Global Hand-Washing Day. The day was set aside to focus attention on hand-washing with soap as an important hygienic practice and the most cost-effective health intervention. This special day was also aimed at inspiring individual commitment to effective hand-washing habit. Awareness is not enough; actually making hand-washing with soap a second-nature practice is what can result in preventing diseases, and even save lives. Fact: being sick is not like taking a walk in the park!
African germs don’t kill, some say. Fact: African germs do kill. Germs are all over. Fortunately, not all are harmful. Through the simple acts of living, our hands can become contaminated with harmful germs – sneezing, coughing, nose-picking, drooling, hand-shaking, hugging, urinating and eating, as well as touching bodily fluids and other fluids on surfaces (walls, railings, clothes and skin). Our hands – between fingers, in palms and under fingernails – are potential rental spaces for germs to survive and thrive, waiting to enter the mouth to make us ill.
Take faecal matter for example. No one likes to eat faecal matter – either their own or that of others. But unintentionally, we share traces of this stuff, and it can make us ill. There are various ways in which we pick up different kinds of germs.
Having money feels good so when it crosses your path, you touch it gleefully. Imagine where the money has been. Who touched it before you? What was the condition of the hands of that person? Here are some possibilities. The last handler of the money you just held might have been picking his nose with his fore-finger. Nasty!
You buy and eat bread. Take a moment to imagine the personal hygiene of bread handlers. Recently, I saw a boy selling bread near Kasoa. He was holding two loafs packaged in transparent plastics. The disturbing sight was that he was holding the bread in one hand with the other hand free to complete the urinating process – by the roadside, in plain view. Yucky! Who is responsible for protecting us from ourselves in such matters?
Research has shown that computer keyboards harbour numerous germs, probably more than toilet seats. As I write, I’m thinking of the last public computer I used at an Internet café. Could it be that the last user might have visited the toilet to ease himself prior to using the computer; and since there was no toilet paper in sight, he ‘managed’ before stepping out of the ‘little room’?
As I write, I’m sneezing a lot and my nose is running profusely from a cold. Supposing you meet me and gladly shake my hands; imagine the germs you would gladly receive from me, only to share with every person you meet afterwards, including your children.
A difficult area to maintain a sane and hygienic hand-washing habit and keep germs away is in public spaces when nature calls. Nature can be unkind and will call you when you want to be left alone. So how should you handle the critical calls which send you into public toilets? You enter gracefully and strategically, and pray that by the end of the episode, you’ll have your dignity intact.
My personal peeve: bathroom towels! When you enter any office toilet (e.g. a bank, hospital or a government ministry) and find a towel hanging on a rail next to the sink, beckoning you to use it to wipe your hands, please resist the temptation. Stay away, no matter how clean it looks or how desperately you feel the urge to wipe the water from your hands (if there is water!). Those towels are disease-infested and dangerous.
At funerals, remember that you don’t know what the person died of. A lousy trend that is becoming entrenched is that from the cemetery, we proceed to ‘gbonyo parties’ (the feast after the burial). Unfortunately, there are no mass washing of hands. Instead, there is a hurry to feast and dance, completely forgetting the dead. The focus quickly turns onto the living, with unwashed hands.
So what do we do? Awareness and alertness constitute half of the battle won. We can avoid some of these germ-crossover situations through making it a habit to wash our own hands thoroughly with soap and water before touching food.
Since we are all in this together, it is also appropriate to question people who handle things they give to us about their hand-washing habits, especially when they violate our personal hygiene threshold. Take for example the photograph on this page. If you are to have a communal meal with loved ones in our traditional habit of eating from the same bowl, do provide teachable lessons for opportunities for everyone to wash their hands properly with soap. Communities could have a “Veronica Bucket” (also, as seen on this page) for hand-washing.
You cannot tell, by looking at hands that are not visibly dirty if they have been washed hygienically. Unintentionally, we spread germs which, like wicked warriors, can cause diseases, at times leading to fatal outcomes – death. So go ahead, develop a personal policy of no germ sharing – a 'don’t-give and don’t-receive' policy.
233-208286817; dorisdartey@yahoo.com
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