Complete care for your Hands

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Hand washing is a good personal hygiene practice that must be done as many times as required daily. As a routine practice, it takes conscious effort and discipline to keep up with the practice. Our hands are vital part of the body and as such we need to take good care of it, your ability to define the use/function of the hand will help you determine how best to care for it.

Primarily, our hands are used to hold and make physical contact with things, there seems to be no limit to what we can do with our hands but we need to be careful not to substitute our hands for tools. Rather than use your hands to unscrew or fasten a screw or nut, use the appropriate tool; screw driver or spanner respectively. I understand that there are certain things we can not do without making contact with regularly but special attention must be given to such identified things. For example; door handle, door bell, tap head, toilet flush, light switch, plug, socket… There are also people who use their hands as substitute for hand packer after sweeping the floor, either out of ignorance or because they are in a hurry to clear the dirt, whichever way it’s an abuse of the hand.  

Hands remain the most possible way to transfer germs from one person to another or from self to the mouth, so if you must live healthy, you need to pay attention to your hands at all time and the way to go about it is through regular hand washing and the use of sanitizer.

Hand washing is most effective when we use an antiseptic soap/ash, under running water with a clean dry hand towel ready for use.

When do I wash my hands?

This list is suggestive, it is expected that it will assist you to identify activities that require hand washing and how to do it effectively. It is not meant to be a complete list but it will help you identify other areas hand washing is required in your daily activities.

·         After work

·         After school

·         Before and after meal

·         After sneezing and coughing

·         After using the toilet

·         After handling money

·         After handling tools

·         After handling poultry product

·         After handling raw food, meat/fish and fresh vegetable

Hand washing techniques

The following steps should be followed according to sequence, in order to achieve optimum cleanliness. 

1^st STEP – Palm to palm

This step involves applying some portion of antiseptic solvent into one of your palm, while you rub the other palm until the soap ladder.

2^nd STEP – Palm to back of hand

This step involves applying the ladder formed in 1^st step, right palm on back left hand and left palm on back right hand and massage thoroughly.

3^rd STEP – Fingers between fingers

This step involves applying the ladder formed above to clean in-between the fingers. To do this, use the right hand fingers to clean in-between the fingers on the left hand and the left hand fingers to clean in-between the fingers on the right hand.

 4^th STEP – Nails and finger tips

This step involves applying the ladder formed above by the right hand to thoroughly clean the nails and finger tip of the left hand and vice versa.

5^th STEP – Palm to wrist

This step involves applying the ladder formed by the right hand palm to thoroughly clean the left wrist, while the left hand palm to thoroughly clean the right hand.

6^th STEP – Rinse thoroughly

After 1^st to 5^th step above, it is time to rinse the soap/solvent ladder thoroughly out from your hands under running water. It is advisable you since your hands under running water to ensure thorough rinsing rather than rinsing in a container.