It's okay to point fingers if your hands are clean

  • Published
  • By Laura McGowan
  • 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Recent headlines read, "Local school district closes when two students are diagnosed with MRSA" and "High school takes cautious approach to student's infection." These precautions are taken when a student or students were diagnosed with the highly contagious and antibiotic resistant form of staph infection called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. 

All around me lately in the two offices from which I work, there's been a lot of hacking, coughing and sneezing going on. It could be due to allergies, change of season, cold or flu. Whatever the reason, the main mantra that follows the reports of the current "superbug" is, wash your hands and often. One would think that people, especially adults, would keep their hands clean. That's not the case. 

If you think that adults automatically wash their hands after using the bathroom--you're wrong! While using a bathroom at work not too long ago, the lady in the stall next to me left without and even a pause at the sink! The door to the bathroom slammed shut without even a drizzle of water coming out of the sink and onto her hands. Now, these folks are the first to want to dip their hands in your popcorn or the community donuts. 

The Centers for Disease Control reports that hand-washing alone would save the lives of roughly 30,000 patients per year in the U.S., not from MRSA alone, but from all nosocomial infections. 

If you are an OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) hand-washer, this article does not pertain to you, but you can share it with your family and friends who don't share your vigilance for hand-washing. 

In articles and fact sheets put out by the CDC, they say hand-washing is the best way to help prevent catching some of these "bugs" that are going around. Also, here's my list of things we should have learned in kindergarten, but may have forgotten: 

1. Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. Then wash your hands.
2. Wash your entire hand, each of them.
3. In order to make sure that you have cleaned your hands well, sing "Happy Birthday" twice (to yourself) while washing your hands and fingernails.
4. Whenever you go to the bathroom, wash your hands.
5. Before you eat a meal, wash your dirty hands.
6. After you pick your nose and you think no one saw, wash your hands.
7. After you change your little sweetie's bottom and THROW the diaper away, wash your hands and your baby's hands to teach them what they're supposed to do when they're old enough to wipe their own bottom.
8. After you blow your nose or wipe your little one's nose, wash your hands.
9. Before you cook--you got it--wash your hands.
10. Last but not least, I know it's impolite to point to fingers, but it's especially bad when they're dirty. So, for the love of all that's pure and clean in the world, please...wash your hands.