Dettol Tips: Hygiene with Baby
Babies are born with an immune system that is not yet fully developed. Therefore, you would need to protect your baby from exposure to harmful germs until their immunity has matured.
Practising good personal and home hygiene is an essential step in protecting babies. Here are some simple steps to help safeguard you and your family from unwanted infection at all times.
- Wash your hands with antibacterial soap and water, and dry them thoroughly before and after preparing food or feeding your baby, after using the toilet or changing your baby’s diaper, after coughing or sneezing or wiping the noses of children, after touching pets or other animals, and before and after giving any medication.
- Regularly clean and disinfect of all surfaces that you frequently touch, such as door handles, taps, flushes, toilet seats, light switches, computer keyboards and TV remote controls to help reduce the spread of germs around the home. According to the Dettol Global Hygiene Survey 2009, nearly 1 in 5 (19%) Malaysians say that they primarily clean their homes just to make them ‘look’ clean rather than remove germs. However, simply cleaning is not enough to kill germs.
- Clean and disinfect kitchen work surfaces before preparing food. Pay attention to kitchen taps. A recent home swab test, supported by Dettol, found 75% of kitchen taps in Malaysia heavily contaminated with S.aureus and E.coli, bacteria that causes diarrhoea.
- Once your baby starts using a high chair, it is important to keep it clean. You can use disinfectant spray or antibacterial wipes to kill bacteria.
- After changing a diaper, wash your hands with antibacterial soap and water, and dry well. When soap and water is not available, use a hand sanitiser.
- If you are using cloth nappies, empty the contents of the cloth nappy into the toilet (never into a sink). To disinfect, place cloth nappies in a nappy bucket with Dettol Antiseptic Liquid.
- If a toy is soiled, clean and disinfect, rinse thoroughly and leave to dry. A Dettol study found that Malaysian homes had heavily contaminated plastic toys (60%). Many had E. coli and S. aureus showing poor levels of hand washing and hygiene in the children using the toys.
Tips to Healthy Family Makes Happy Family brought to you by Dettol.
Related links:
