Most people get colds in the winter and spring, but it is possible to get a cold any time of the year. Symptoms usually include:

• sore throat
• runny nose
• coughing
• sneezing
• headaches
• body aches

Sore throat and runny nose are usually the first signs of a cold, followed by coughing and sneezing. Most people recover in about 7-10 days. You can help reduce your risk of getting a cold: wash your hands often, avoid close contact with sick people, and don’t touch your face with unwashed hands.

Most people recover within about 7-10 days. However, people with weakened immune systems, asthma, or respiratory conditions may develop serious illness, such as bronchitis or pneumonia.

How to Protect Yourself

Viruses that cause colds can spread from infected people to others through the air and close personal contact. You can also get infected through contact with stool (poop) or respiratory secretions from an infected person. This can happen when you shake hands with someone who has a cold, or touch a surface, like a doorknob, that has respiratory viruses on it, then touch your eyes, mouth, or nose.

You can help reduce your risk of getting a cold:

• Wash your hands often with soap and water. Wash them for 20 seconds, and help young children do the same. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Viruses that cause colds can live on your hands, and regular handwashing can help protect you from getting sick.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands. Viruses that cause colds can enter your body this way and make you sick.
• tay away from people who are sick. Sick people can spread viruses that cause the common cold through close contact with others.

How to Protect Others

If you have a cold, you should follow these tips to help prevent spreading it to other people:

• Stay at home while you are sick and keep children out of school or daycare while they are sick.
• Avoid close contact with others, such as hugging, kissing, or shaking hands.
• Move away from people before coughing or sneezing.
• Cough and sneeze into a tissue then throw it away, or cough and sneeze into your upper shirt sleeve, completely covering your mouth and nose.
• Wash your hands after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose.
• Disinfect frequently touched surfaces and objects, such as toys, doorknobs, and mobile devices.

There is no vaccine to protect you against the common cold.

How to Feel Better

There is no cure for a cold. To feel better, you should get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids. Over-the-counter medicines may help ease symptoms but will not make your cold go away any faster. Always read the label and use medications as directed. Talk to your doctor before giving your child nonprescription cold medicines, since some medicines contain ingredients that are not recommended for children. Learn more about symptom relief of upper respiratory infections, including colds.

Antibiotics will not help you recover from a cold caused by a respiratory virus. They do not work against viruses, and they may make it harder for your body to fight future bacterial infections if you take them unnecessarily. Learn more about when antibiotics work.

When to See a Doctor

You should call your doctor if you or your child has one or more of these conditions:

• symptoms that last more than 10 days
• symptoms that are severe or unusual
• if your child is younger than 3 months of age and has a fever or is lethargic

You should also call your doctor right away if you are at high risk for serious flu complications and get flu symptoms such as fever, chills, and muscle or body aches. People at high risk for flu complications include young children (younger than 5 years old), adults 65 years and older, pregnant women, and people with certain medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and heart disease.
Your doctor can determine if you or your child has a cold or the flu and can recommend treatment to help with symptoms.

Causes of the Common Cold

Many different respiratory viruses can cause the common cold, but rhinoviruses are the most common. Rhinoviruses can also trigger asthma attacks and have been linked to sinus and ear infections. Other viruses that can cause colds include respiratory syncytial virus, human parainfluenza viruses, adenovirus, common human coronaviruses, and human metapneumovirus.

Know the Difference between Common Cold and Flu

The flu, which is caused by influenza viruses, also spreads and causes illness around the same time as the common cold. Because these two illnesses have similar symptoms, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone. In general, flu symptoms are worse than the common cold and can include fever or feeling feverish/chills, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches and fatigue (tiredness). Flu can also have very serious complications. CDC recommends a yearly flu vaccination as the first and best way to prevent the flu. If you get the flu, antiviral drugs may be a treatment option.

Above article is obtain from WHO, for more details, welcome to visit: https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_201-DM40021&ACSTrackingLabel=Features%20from%20this%20Week%3A%20Common%20Cold%2C%20Prevent%20Domestic%20Violence%2C%20Milestones%20Matter%2C%20and%20More%21&deliveryName=USCDC_201-DM40021

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healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), antimicrobial resistance, health costs, and saves lives. Poor compliance with hand

Hygiene practices remains both a problem and a challenge for IPC practitioners all over the world.

The under-5 mortality rate in Uganda is 55 per 1,000 population.

But the death-causing diseases is preventable by correct handwashing.

Since the conflict lasted over 20 years until 2006, building infrastructure such as water supplying facility is a big issue in Uganda.

In such unhygienic conditions, correct handwashing plays an important role to prevent children from diseases.

Learn more about when and how to wash your hands, the importance of using soap and water, and what you can do if soap and clean, running water are not available. Whether you are at home, at work, traveling, or already sick, find out how good hand hygiene can protect you, your family, and others.

Wash Your Hands Often to Stay Healthy

You can help yourself and your loved ones stay healthy by washing your hands often, especially during these key times when you are likely to get and spread germs:

Before, during, and after preparing food

Before eating food

Before and after caring for someone at home who is sick with vomiting or diarrhea

Before and after treating a cut or wound

After using the toilet

After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet

After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing

After touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste

After handling pet food or pet treats

After touching garbage

washing hands under faucet

Follow Five Steps to Wash Your Hands the Right Way

Washing your hands is easy, and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of germs. Clean hands can stop germs from spreading from one person to another and throughout an entire community—from your home and workplace to childcare facilities and hospitals.

Follow these five steps every time.

Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.

Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.

Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Need a timer? Hum the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning to end twice.

Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.

Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.

Why? Read the science behind the recommendations.

Use Hand Sanitizer When You Can’t Use Soap and Water

using hand sanitizer

You can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol if soap and water are not available.

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to get rid of germs in most situations. If soap and water are not readily available, you can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. You can tell if the sanitizer contains at least 60% alcohol by looking at the product label.

Sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in many situations. However,

Sanitizers do not get rid of all types of germs.

Hand sanitizers may not be as effective when hands are visibly dirty or greasy.

Hand sanitizers might not remove harmful chemicals from hands like pesticides and heavy metals. 

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Most of us think hot water helps kill germs and bacteria on our hands. But the reality is, the water would have to be scalding hot to make that happen. In fact, hot water may work against us. Water that is too hot may cause us to remove our hands too quickly to wash properly. Further, researchers in Florida found that there is statistically little difference whether hands are washed in hot or cold water.

Myth 2: Always use antibacterial soap when washing hands.

Back in 2007, a study of triclosan, which was used in hand soap and is now banned in the U.S., did not significantly reduce the number of bacteria on hands. Since then other studies have come to similar conclusions about many other antibacterial hand soaps.

Myth 3: You don’t have to dry your hands after washing.

Some people wash their hands, shake them off, and then fly out the door. Drying hands helps remove any remaining microbes on hands plus it is easier for pathogens to collect on hands that are wet.

Myth 4: Using disposable paper towel is the best way to dry hands.

This is true and for a variety of reasons. First, correctly using a disposable paper towel to dry hands takes about 10 seconds. Studies indicate it can take as long as 45 seconds for some electric dryers to remove moisture from hands thoroughly, far too long for most people to wait. And some studies indicate that hand dryers can spread microbes to nearby surfaces, increasing the chances of cross- contamination.

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In Spain, between 5-10% of patients will get an infection related to healthcare, according to the Epine study

The doctor of the Preventive Medicine Service of the Hospital Quirónsalud Infanta Luisa, Sacred Heart and Field of Gibraltar Nuria López Ruiz points out, in the framework of the World Hand Hygiene Day that is celebrated on May 5, the importance of hand hygiene when it comes to preventing the transmission of infections in health care.

And it is that the specialist says that “washing hands saves lives”, since the hands are “the main route of transmission of germs during health care.” In Spain, as extracted from the Prevalence Study of Nosocomial Infections in Spain (Epine), between 5-10% of patients will get an infection related to healthcare and thousands of people die daily worldwide because of infections acquired while receiving health care, as highlighted by WHO.

As indicated in a statement, some examples of diseases in which transmission can be reduced by hand washing are common colds, the flu, hepatitis A, some gastroenteritis, infections with microorganisms resistant and not resistant to antibiotics, herpes Whooping cough, among others.

Specifically, this year, World Hand Hygiene Day is celebrated under the slogan ‘Prevent septicemia is in your hands’. Sepsis arises when an infection disrupts the normal response of the body and damage to organs and tissues.

Thus, each hospital in Quirónsalud periodically performs an observation of hand hygiene according to the five moments of the World Health Organization (WHO) – before contact with the patient, before aseptic tasks, after aseptic tasks, after contact with patient and after patient environment.

As for the general population, López highlights the importance of raising public awareness of hand washing whenever they are visibly dirty, after using the bathroom, after eating, before preparing food, among other times. He also states that “it is very important to have respiratory hygiene”, that is, to sneeze in tissues and never in the palms of your hands, cough towards the elbow, cover your mouth when coughing, among other measures to take.

“All populations must have good hand hygiene, although more vulnerable populations must, in general, be especially careful, such as children, the elderly and immunocompromised people,” he adds.

To do this, he explains the benefits of the hydroalcoholic solution (alcohol-based disinfectant), in the hospital setting, as a usual preferred means to disinfect the hands when they are not visibly dirty. “It is faster, more effective and better tolerated by the hands than washing them with soap and water,” says the preventive doctor, who indicates that, at home, “soap and water can be used, but remember that for washing be effective, you have to take the right time, about 40 or 60 seconds in total. ”

In addition, in the facilities of the Quirónsalud Infanta Luisa, Sagrado Corazón and Campo de Gibraltar hospitals, Dr. López is going to carry out activities, from this Thursday until next Monday, May 7, for the World Hand Hygiene Day aimed at sensitize health professionals and the general population that “good hand hygiene saves lives”.

Some of these activities will consist of giving information and carrying out practical exercises to learn to wash your hands correctly, using a black box with ultraviolet light to see if the hand hygiene technique is done correctly, training health professionals in hospitalization plants and ICU or the visit to the area of ​​Pediatrics to also raise awareness among children through games.

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