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Swine flu and the hand washing bug

By Alix Miller
May 13, 2009 at 4:42 pm

The coverage from some corners of the media about swine flu is enough to make me have a serious attack of obsessive hand, home and everything washing.

Even as I type this, I’m wondering just how many dangerous germs are lurking on my less than pristine keyboard. Should I be wearing gloves? An airtight suit perhaps?

However, we shouldn’t panic but instead be aware of the possible threat to our health, and prepare for it with some simple steps.

It’s funny how much of a media storm swine flu has created compared to the much bigger killers that exist which never seem to hit the headlines.

Take diarrhoea. Okay it’s hardly a sexy subject, but did you know that 230,000 children die from diarrhoea or diarrhoea-related illnesses in Ethiopia alone each year? Read more about the horrifying worldwide figures in yesterday’s shocking BBC news report.

Preventing the outbreak of disease is something the Red Cross specialises in. Take Namibia, where we have sent a mass sanitation emergency response unit (ERU) in the wake of flooding on the Zambezi.

The ERU is equipped to deal with the sanitation needs of up to 19,000 people, and also works to prevent sanitation-related diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea. Read Red Cross sanitation engineer Woody Eastwood’s twitters from Namibia to keep up with progress there.

But back to swine flu. Just as the Red Cross has sprung into readiness to support statutory services in the UK should the current situation worsen, so too has the organisation responded internally.

All around our London office canisters of bacterial wipes and wash have been appearing, alongside posters about how to prevent the spread of infection.

Our new office mantra is: catch it, bin it, kill it!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Alix Miller

Alix Miller

Alix is senior writer, based in London. She writes and edits across print and online media

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The British Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

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