By Stephen Adeleye
Lokoja, May 5, 2022
A medical practitioner, Dr Abimbola Adesanya, on Thursday advised Nigerians to imbibe the culture of ‘hand washing’ to drastically reduce the transmission of infectious diseases in the society.
Adesanya gave the advice at a sensitisation program organised by Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Lokoja, to mark this year’s ”World Hand Hygiene Day” celebrated every May 5.
Adesanya, who is the Head of Department (HOD) Community Health and Focal Person Infection Control, FMC Lokoja, said the theme for this year’s is: ”Unite For Safety And Clean Hands”.
According to her, the focus is to create a culture of washing hands and ensuring that our hands are always clean, we are expected to make hand hygiene part of our culture.
She noted that hand hygiene had statistically reduced the transmission of infectious diseases to the barest minimum.
”We want to use hand hygiene as a tool in the community and everywhere to drastically reduce the transmission of infectious diseases in the society.
”That is why the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is mandating every facility to ensure that health workers and patients make hand washing a culture.
”It will help protect our families, reduce hospital and community acquired infections, such as COVID-19, lassa fever, measles, cholera, diarrhea, among others
”We must protect ourselves through the washing of our hands and ensure that they are clean always,” she said.
She stressed that hand hygiene remained the easiest way through which any infectious disease could easily be prevented.
In his remarks, the Medical Director of FMC Lokoja, Dr Olatunde Alabi, said hand washing remained very important to them as health workers.
He stressed the need for health workers to equally wash their hands when going home after close of work in order to protect their families.
”We should make sure that we do the right thing as much as possible as health workers because of ourselves, patients and families,” he advised.
In his vote of thanks, the Head of Clinical of FMC, Dr Bernard Ododo, thanked the management for making the necessary provision for the celebration of the day, while urging the health workers to imbibe maintenance culture.
The highlight of the occasion was the demonstration of how to do a thorough and effective hand washing.
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