Hand Washing

More than two hundred years ago, Florence Nightingale recognized the relationship between washing our hands and enjoying good health. Many generations later we still struggle with this reality and workers, even those in the food and healthcare industries have to be reminded to wash their hands. I am still trying to understand how as intelligent as we are to create machines that take us to the moon and back, we forget that we should defend ourselves against our microscopic foes.

There is no better time to observe that hand washing was not done than when one is lying in a hospital bed. Perhaps because we have lots of time to reflect on what we did or did not do in the previous months or maybe years. As a nurse, I am always amazed at how some patients are jolted back to their childhood days when their mothers insisted that they washed their hands before taking a seat at the dining table. A time when, if you dared to forget, you were sternly admonished to "get up and go wash your hands."

When we wash our hands with soap and water, what we are doing is reducing the amount of viable germs (microorganisms) on our hands. Germs have the potential to make us sick when they enter our bodies mainly through our eyes, noses, mouths and other openings. At risk of appearing unrealistic, I must say that we all have a responsibility to wash our hands in order to protect ourselves and others.

We do not have to appear defenseless against the organisms we cannot see without a microscope. Brilliant scientists spent countless hours throughout the ages conducting research to help us understand how to fortify our defences against this unseen enemy. The big question is, how do we interpret what we know and where does common sense go in times of trouble? Therefore, it is not surprising, at least not to me, that even during the Covid-19 pandemic, we still "forgot" to wash our hands even though our lives may have depended on it.

#HandWashing #StayingHealthy