How To Be Personal hygiene

Personal hygiene includes: cleaning your body every day washing your hands with soap after going to the toilet brushing your teeth twice a day covering your mouth and nose with a tissue (or your sleeve) when sneezing or coughing washing your hands after handling pets and other animals To slow the spread of COVID-19, you should: wash your hands often with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitisers avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth clean and disinfect surfaces you use often such as benchtops, desks and doorknobs clean and disinfect objects you use often such as mobile phones, keys, wallets and work passes increase the amount of fresh air by opening windows or changing air conditioning Why is personal hygiene important? Good hygiene is vital because it helps prevent you and your children from getting or spreading germs and infectious diseases. The germs that cause many diseases can be passed on through touching other people, getting faeces (poo) on your hands, handling contaminated food, or coming into contact with dirty surfaces or objects. Conditions that you can develop if you have poor personal hygiene include: COVID-19 and other infectious diseases diarrhoea, especially gastroenteritis respiratory infections, including colds and flu staph infections worm-related conditions, such as threadworms scabies trachoma, an eye infection which can lead to blindness tinea or athlete’s foot tooth decay Washing your body Try to bathe or shower each day. Wash well, especially under your armpits and around your genitals and anus. Keeping clean will prevent skin irritations and remove bacteria that cause body odour. Wash yourself with soap, shower gel or a hypoallergenic body wash. Soap removes more germs, but you may need to wash sensitive body parts with plain water or salt water. If there is no tap water or it is scarce, clean yourself with a clean wet cloth or sponge. Washing your hands To avoid getting sick, wash your hands properly for at least 20 seconds. Wet your hands with water. Apply enough soap to cover all surfaces of your hands. Rub your palms together. Clean between the fingers and the back of your hands. Clean dirty nails with a scrubbing brush, if one is available. Rinse both sides of your hands, preferably under clean running water. Dry off your hands with a clean towel. Use the towel to turn off the tap. You can also use hand sanitiser. Make sure you use enough of the product to cover all surfaces of your hands. Make sure you rub the palms, backs of the hands and in between your fingers. When to wash your hands It is especially important to wash your hands after going to the toilet because faeces, which you might come into contact with, contains billions of germs. Also, wash your hands: before and after eating or preparing food after changing babies’ nappies before and after touching a sick person or cleaning up vomit or body fluids after blowing your nose before and after treating cuts or wounds after touching rubbish, dirty surfaces or objects after handling pets or farm animals Find out more here about hand washing.​