As the 2019-nCoV sweeps across the globe, alarming scientists and the general public by the scale of its spread, a simple common sense measure — frequent handwashing — is what might save you, the ordinary citizen on the ground, more than any face mask donned 24x7.
It was in the late 1840s that Ingaz Semmelweis, a Hungary-born physician, tried to impress upon his colleagues and peers that they themselves could be making their patients sick, unless they washed and disinfected their hands properly before touching them.
Semmelweis was a very observant physician and in 1847, while he was serving as an assistant in obstetrics at a teaching hospital in Vienna, he noticed that women delivered by physicians and medical students had a much higher rate (13-18%) of post-delivery mortality (called puerperal fever or childbed fever) than women delivered by midwives (2%).
Semmelweis concluded that the women delivered by physicians and students died more because the latter were doing autopsies too and then handling pregnant women without washing hands properly.
He initiated a mandatory handwashing policy using a chloride of lime solution for medical students and physicians and saw the mortality rate of women falling to 2% and later to 1% when he began washing the medical instruments also. Yet, his theories were not accepted by his peers and he could not convince them because washing of hands before treating each patient was too much work. It was nearly two decades later and after his death that the value of handwashing was appreciated, when the germ theory was proposed (Adapted from Heroes and martyrs of quality and safety: Ignaz Semmelweis and the birth of infection control; M Best, D Neuhauser; BMJ, 2004).
Almost 150 years later, even though hand hygiene is considered to be the single-most crucial factor that can prevent cross-infection between people, the medical fraternity themselves admit that it is performed only half as much as it should be done.
Elisabeth Rosenthal, a journalist and physician, who covered the SARS outbreak for NewYork Times in 2002-03, recalled in a recent article that it was sheer common sense that kept her and her family from falling prey to SARS while in China.
Her lessons from her SARS experience to reduce the risk of catching the infection was, washing hands frequently with soap and water and keeping them clean. Secondly, stay at home / do not send children to school if there is any illness.
NcoV is a droplet infection and it is easy for viruses to get on common surfaces such as tables, door knobs, and washroom taps when a patient coughs or sneezes. If one were to touch these surfaces unknowingly and then touch one’s face or rub the nose or eyes, it is a sureshot way of getting a cross-infection.
Frequent handwashing reduces this risk of transferring germs straight on to one’s face because soap and water can wash away most of the germs.
How to wash
That said, it is equally important how one washes hands.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends scrubbing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, cleaning the back of your hands, between your fingers, and under your fingernails.
After washing hands, air-dry your hands or use a tissue to wipe your hands and use the tissue to turn off the tap, because bathroom faucets and taps can harbour even faecal bacteria.
If you have no access to water, use a hand sanitiser with 60-90% alcohol, rub it in your hands for 20 seconds and allow to dry (there are superbugs like C. difficile which are immune to hand sanitisers). Wet wipes are ideally used for cleaning down surfaces.
C. Maya
