Los Angeles, CA—The best part
of my life was being a medical corpsman for the U.S. Army serving in
Germany. This resulted from being drafted during the Viet Nam War. There, I learned a lot about hand
washing and sanitization. It all made
perfect sense.
Let me begin by reminding you
that the life expectancy for human males in America in 1900 was 47 years
old? Wow, what a short life.
Our most important discovery
was Penicillin to combat infections that were killing us all. There is a catch to that wonder drug and
that’s over and or too much repetitive treatment.
We have now have created
so-called super bugs that are immune to our antibiotics arsenal. Soon we will
have to find new ways to treat infections.
The best way is not to either get or transmit deadly infections to begin with.
People in nursing homes,
hospitals and care facilities are becoming infected with the superbugs at a
much faster rate than in even the recent past.
Generally the medical staff s are bound by strict rules to wash their hands. They don’t do this so much because of the
rules but because of training and education.
The patients and their
visitors are not even encouraged to wash their hands before entering these
places? Think about how we use our hands to grasp dirty bannisters on stairwells, push elevator buttons or even handle the
steering wheel in our own car. They may look clean but they are not!
Women’s purses and our
cell-phones are hotbed breeding grounds for infectious bacteria. We must take extra steps to sanitize
those things.
I have an idea that’s
overdue. At the entrance of every care
facility there should be sinks with running hot water, soap and towels. Before patients, visitors or for that matter anyone enters these places they should be required to vigorously wash and dry their
hands.
I’m convinced that this would
actually save lives. Children and the
elderly would get the most protection from this plan.
It would be expensive for care facilities to retrofit their buildings but the architects and
building planners should in the future build these places with the sinks at the
entrances.
In case you’re one of those
that believe in hand-sanitizer products they are no alternative for traditional
hand washing. Those things are more of a gimmick. You also
need to know that we remove the most bacteria when we rub off the water with
clean towels. Those blow dryers are
worthless in any effort to clean your hands.
I hope I have motivated a few
of you to rethink simple hand washing.
When cleaning remember the things we touch most often like refrigerator
door handles also need the most attention when we clean.
Watch the video below.
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