Coronavirus: Refrain from communal hand washing – CWSA urges Ghanaians
A passionate call has been made for Ghanaians to adopt proper hand washing approaches and not engage in communal hand washing to help prevent the spread of the newly discovered pandemic COVID-19.
“The act of washing your hands in one bowl as a group is not proper and can be more dangerous than not washing hands at all, as you will be introducing new viruses and sharing them through that common bowl in the name of proper hand washing”.
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Mrs. Theodora Adomako-Adjei, a Senior Extension Services officer of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) said this during a work-place prevention activity which provided hand washing water bowls for the institution to ensure the safety of its staff on the back of the COVID-19 outbreak.
According to her, hand washing is the simplest thing to do but very difficult for people to practice adding that, we should not wait for crisis such as corona to be practicing correct hand washing.
She bemoaned the attitude of Ghanaians regarding hand washing and cautioned that even though it is an effective intervention, if not timely, correctly and appropriately done, can resort to failure and create much more anxiety than we are currently experiencing.
“We cannot run our hands under water and claim to have engaged in safe hand washing” she opined.
In her outline of proper hand washing, she said, “get water and soap, wet your hands first to make sure to soak enough soap, apply the soap and ensure that you get a lot of bubbles, rub your hands together, wash between the fingers and finger nails as well as the back of your hands and rinse under clean running water .
She sounded a note of caution that, after all these, if you decide to dry up your neatly washed hands with dirty contaminated towels, work done is nil as it is sure to be carrying home some viruses introduced by the dirty towel.
Mrs. Adomako Adjei was however hopeful that with the right hygienic behaviors, approaches and practices, we can promote good health and urged other institutions to take the necessary steps to create a safe and enabling environment for their staff and clientele.
