The culture of regular hand-washing as an antidote to diseases has been advocated in order to promote healthy living and ultimately longer life; ELEOJO IDACHABA reports.
Until the advent of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the culture of a regular washing of the hands appeared alien to many Nigerians except paramedics. Even when hygiene experts counseled that one needs to thoroughly wash one’s hands after public contact or after using the toilet, it seemed like a major burden too much to bear until the pandemic came calling in 2020 demanding that bodily contact especially through the hand should be discouraged.
Since then, washing of hands has become a normal practice for many unlike before more so as several health advocacy groups have taken up the campaign lately. As part of activities to mark the 2023 Hand Washing Day which was May 5, experts proffered several solutions. Part of it was that regular washing of the hands can help to prolong life as it would checkmate contacting diseases.
Clarion call
According to Dr. Nkolika Uwaezuoke, the head of Medical Microbiology Unit, Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Jabi, in Abuja, practising hand- washing habit reduces mortality and saves lives. She was speaking during the hospital’s celebration of the day which was on the theme: ‘Accelerate Action Together: Save Lives: Clean Your Hands.’
She said hand hygiene had been proved to be the singular most important practice that reduces the transmission and spread of diseases easily.
“Non-practising of hand hygiene can lead to transmission of infections within the hospital; it is not just the patient, as it spreads from one person to the other. So, it is important that WHO has to dedicate a day to increase awareness on hand washing and hygiene.
“Hand-washing using running tap water is very important and where you don’t have tap water, you use what we call Veronika buckets which are plastic pockets with taps. The second is the use of alcohol-based hand drops, commonly known as hand sanitisers.”
She said the campaign objective is to strengthen communities of actors in healthcare to accelerate action in order to improve hand hygiene and infection prevention and control at point of care.
On his part, the hospital’s deputy head, Clinical Services, Dr. Christopher Omage, said the aim of that day’s celebration was to beam the searchlight on what he called teamwork.
“The essence is to promote team work involving hospital staff and the public to be aware that by just cleaning your hand, you can actually prevent the transmission of most diseases. Hospital staff should be conscious at all times to ensure that they wash their hands to curtail the spread of infections.
In the same way, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) also emphasised the importance of safe health through frequent washing of hands with a view to reducing infections.
NCDC’s assistant director in charge of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Dr Tochi Okwor said so.
According to her, good hand hygiene can save lives and prevent the transmission of infections while calling on Nigerians to prioritise hygiene and hand hygiene.
“Indeed, many facilities are demonstrating strong engagement and advancements in scaling up those actions, but overall, the progress is slow and our collective gains are at risk. To prioritise clean hands in health facilities, people at all levels need to believe in the importance of hand hygiene and IPC to save lives, by collaborating and acting as change agents in creating a culture of safety at our health facilities and communities.
“We can accelerate actions to prevent infections and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in healthcare and build a culture of safety and quality in which hand hygiene improvement is given high priority,” she said.
On his part, the programme officer IPC, Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), Mr. Chika Igbokwe, stressed that the institute as partners with NCDC is making healthcare givers know that hand hygiene is important to check infections.
“Health care facilities are challenged; we have the burden of care and the workload is quite high; we try to make them understand that reducing the burden of infection ultimately reduces the workload because when you break the circle of that chain of infection, you are creating an atmosphere where less patients are coming to the facility and that in turn reduces the workload of the healthcare worker.”
Ignorance, lack of compliance
Investigations showed that one of the reasons for low compliance with hand hygiene is that healthcare workers do not understand that in the line of their duty, they carry organisms in their hands because pathogens are not visible.
Another possible reason that leads to noncompliant behaviour towards hand hygiene is that health givers are less likely to get hospital-associated infections (HAIs).
A recent study report by UNICEF in the post Covid era shows that nine out of 10 schools in the country have no hand-washing facilities, a development that is not good for healthy living.
In 2018, it also reported that only 21 per cent of Nigerians had access to basic hand-washing facilities at home and the figure dropped to 16 per cent in 2019.
UNICEF stated that, “The global response efforts to the Covid-19 pandemic created an unprecedented hand hygiene culture, yet, progress remains far too slow for the most vulnerable and underserved communities.”
It then goes to say that if hand hygiene reduces the transmission of communicable diseases, absence of hand hygiene practice in public places like schools, workplaces, homes, markets and hospitals remains a public health challenge.
This is seen as a challenge, not only in Nigeria but on the continent as the World Health Organisation (WHO) says 50 per cent of healthcare facilities all over the world lack basic hygiene, while about 32 per cent of healthcare facilities in Africa do not have access to hand hygiene facilities at the points of care.
New charge/way forward
To that extent, the director general Africa Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Jean Kaseya, said hand hygiene practices are critical in reducing the transmission of infections.
On his part, the director Community Health Services, National Primary Health Care Agency, Dr. Chris Eleoma, said hand-washing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of diseases and save lives. Therefore, he urged Nigerians to build on the hand-washing gains of Covid-19 in order to make hand hygiene a culture in the country, as according to him, there is a need for more investment in water, sanitation and hygiene to help prevent the outbreak of communicable diseases in communities.
Again, Dr. Okwor said it was important to recognise that health workers are at the forefront of the country’s response strategy to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases, but noted in dismay that many health workers do not understand the enormity of their jobs; therefore, do not pay attention to health hygiene.
As a preventive measure, therefore, he advised that, “They should wash their hands before touching a patient, before a clean/aseptic procedure, after body fluid exposure risk, after touching a patient and after touching the patient’s surroundings.
“The patient is at the centre of the care. The patient could be you or me. We are either patients today or patients in the future.
“We need to empower healthcare workers to do regular hand hygiene and we also need patients to get involved. Maintaining hand hygiene does not come by accident; it is cultivated,” he said.
Still dwelling on hand-washing culture, Dr. Rita Okonkwo, Global Health Security Manager and Research Scientist, Institute of Human Virologist Nigeria (IHVN), said there are two sides to building a culture of hand hygiene, as according to her, health workers are expected to maintain a culture of hand hygiene while giving care and support to patients.
“IHVN is using empirical data to create targeted hand hygiene interventions. Based on our assessments, we see the need to create more holistic efforts towards improving systems that sustain the culture of hand hygiene,” she said.
In all of these, given the importance of hand-washing in disease prevention and control and seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is expected that everyone should take advantage of the traditional and new media to promote hand hygiene culture in the country.
