We live with germs all the time: in the air we breathe, on surfaces we use and touch, inside us and on our skin. They cannot be seen with the naked eye but they are everywhere. Most of these germs are harmless. A large number of them are even beneficial to us. But get too many of the wrong germ in the wrong place and illness or disease can often result. Controlling the number of germs around us is one way of reducing the risk of contracting the illnesses and diseases.

We were all taught as children to wash our hands after going to the bathroom, after playing with animals and before meals. There was a good reason for that: the nasty germs that we can’t see can transfer from our hands onto our food and cause us to become sick. Good hand hygiene helps to reduce the number of germs on our hands and therefore reduces the risk of becoming sick.

We use our hands to do things all the time. Our hands are great carriers of germs. Infection control experts have identified the hands as being the number one method whereby germs are transferred from one person to another. The regularly reinforce the good hand hygiene message in the prevention of disease outbreaks to healthcare workers and to the general public.

Even clean hands can have over a million germs in just one square centimetre of skin. Take a look at the palms of your hands and see how many creases and folds there are. It is easy to see where germs can hide. And if you aren’t cleaning your hands properly, they will just stay there. Soap and water are excellent for removing dirt and grime from our hands, but plain soap simply does not kill germs. Antiseptic and antibacterial soaps are only effective at killing germs if the soap is lathered on your hands for longer than 30 seconds. Any less than that and you may as well use plain soap.

Alcohol-based hand sanitisers have been proved to be very quick and very effective at killing most germs on hands. Learn more about alcohol-based hand sanitisers on our fact sheet. Killing all germs and making everything sterile is not practical and is not really good either because we still need germs to perform processes that we don’t even see. Exposure to small quantities of many germs has been shown to benefit people’s immune systems as they build resistance to the germs and prevent illness that way (this is how our vaccines work).

Whatever you use to clean or sanitise your hands, make sure you cover all areas of your hands, especially the webbing between your fingers, the back of your hands and around the fingernails. These areas are often missed yet they are as important to keep clean as the palm of your hand.
Good hand hygiene is something that is now so simple there is no excuse for not doing it. Keep yourself healthy by practicing good hand hygiene all the time.

We live with germs all the time: in the air we breathe, on surfaces we use and touch, inside us and on our skin. They cannot be seen with the naked eye but they are everywhere. Most of these germs are harmless. A large number of them are even beneficial to us. But get too many of the wrong germ in the wrong place and illness or disease can often result. Controlling the number of germs around us is one way of reducing the risk of contracting the illnesses and diseases.

We were all taught as children to wash our hands after going to the bathroom, after playing with animals and before meals. There was a good reason for that: the nasty germs that we can’t see can transfer from our hands onto our food and cause us to become sick. Good hand hygiene helps to reduce the number of germs on our hands and therefore reduces the risk of becoming sick.

We use our hands to do things all the time. Our hands are great carriers of germs. Infection control experts have identified the hands as being the number one method whereby germs are transferred from one person to another. The regularly reinforce the good hand hygiene message in the prevention of disease outbreaks to healthcare workers and to the general public.

Even clean hands can have over a million germs in just one square centimetre of skin. Take a look at the palms of your hands and see how many creases and folds there are. It is easy to see where germs can hide. And if you aren’t cleaning your hands properly, they will just stay there. Soap and water are excellent for removing dirt and grime from our hands, but plain soap simply does not kill germs. Antiseptic and antibacterial soaps are only effective at killing germs if the soap is lathered on your hands for longer than 30 seconds. Any less than that and you may as well use plain soap.

Alcohol-based hand sanitisers have been proved to be very quick and very effective at killing most germs on hands. Learn more about alcohol-based hand sanitisers on our fact sheet. Killing all germs and making everything sterile is not practical and is not really good either because we still need germs to perform processes that we don’t even see. Exposure to small quantities of many germs has been shown to benefit people’s immune systems as they build resistance to the germs and prevent illness that way (this is how our vaccines work).

Whatever you use to clean or sanitise your hands, make sure you cover all areas of your hands, especially the webbing between your fingers, the back of your hands and around the fingernails. These areas are often missed yet they are as important to keep clean as the palm of your hand.
Good hand hygiene is something that is now so simple there is no excuse for not doing it. Keep yourself healthy by practicing good hand hygiene all the time.