As antibiotic use has increased exponentially over the past several decades, bacteria germs have increasingly become resistant to formerly powerful germ-fighting drugs. The mechanisms of this resistance are sophisticated. The more we use new antibiotics with great potency to treat simple infections that either don’t require antibiotics at all or would respond to antibiotics of lesser potency, the more stories we’ll see in the headlines about resistant bacteria.
The news of this week is the increased occurrence of resistant staphylococcal bacteria (called MRSA, for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) in schools and communities across the country. A teenager in Virginia tragically died, and schools have been closed to contain the spread of the germ. Although most infections with MRSA are benign and usually limited to the skin, when more serious infections do occur (as they can with any bacteria, resistant or not), they are more difficult to treat because the antibiotic options are limited.
What can be done to slow or halt the spread of these germs? It’s back to basics. Careful and compulsive handwashing, and limiting the unnecessary use of antibiotics. Here are some specific suggestions (from: GERM PROOF YOUR KIDS – The Complete Guide to Protecting (without Overprotecting) your Family from Infections):
1. Teach kids how to wash. They should spend at least 20 seconds at the sink scrubbing between fingers and under their fingernails. Simple soap and water is more than adequate. Antibacterial soap, while probably not harmful (to your child or to the environment, as far as anyone has been able to prove so far), is also not necessary. Use alcohol hand wipes when washing is needed but your kids aren’t near the sink.
2. Teach kids when to wash (see: “The Top Ten Handwashing Moments” listed below)
3. Employ a “mini-quarantine” if someone in your home is sick (see GERM PROOF YOUR KIDS for details)
4. Teach kids that sharing is bad. This undoes much of what you’ve spent their entire childhoods teaching them, but inanimate objects like towels, toothbrushes, toiletries, tissues, teacups, and many things that don’t start with “t” can harbor bacteria for days.
5. Promptly clean and bandage all cuts and scrapes. Keep wounds covered until they are healed.
6. Help your doctor by not requesting antibiotics for infections that don’t require them – e.g. the common cold, the flu, most sore throats, some ear infections.
7. When antibiotics are necessary, ask your doctor for the least expensive antibiotic available that will still treat your child’s infection – generally, the least expensive antibiotics are those that have the least risk of spreading resistance among germs (there’s an important reason why this is true – see GERM PROOF YOUR KIDS for more details).
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Top 10 most important hand washing moments
1. After playing with a sick friend or sibling (or after handling things that a sick child might have handled – like in the doctor’s waiting room; see below)
2. After using the bathroom (use the hand towel to turn off the sink and open the bathroom door – see “hand drying” below).
3. Before eating
4. After high-fiving the opposing team at the end of a sports competition (or any other mass-handshaking event like the receiving line at a Bar Mitzvah or graduation).
5. After recess
6. After school or day care
7. After playing with animals or in areas where animals hang out
8. After playing outside
9. After blowing their nose, or coughing into their hands. Although your kids cannot “give themselves an infection” by contact with their own secretions, this is a very considerate gesture that protects other kids from the germs on your kids’ hands.
10. Before bedtime
Harley A. Rotbart, M.D.
www.germproofyourkids.com