Posted by Clean Group NZ on 2023-12-26
Hygiene extends beyond mere cleanliness, embodying a series of practices vital for preserving health and preventing disease spread, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). This broad term encompasses various aspects, including personal hygiene, home and everyday hygiene, medical hygiene, sleep hygiene, and food hygiene. While many associate hygiene primarily with personal cleanliness habits such as showering and handwashing, its scope is much wider, including the maintenance of clean surfaces in homes and workplaces, especially bathroom facilities.
The practice of hygiene is multifaceted, involving lifestyle, cleanliness, health, and medicine aspects. It plays a preventive role in medicine and daily life by reducing the incidence and spread of germs leading to disease. Hygiene practices, however, are not universal and can vary significantly across cultures.
In sectors like food manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics, hygiene is a critical component of quality assurance. While the terms cleanliness and hygiene are often used interchangeably, leading to confusion, hygiene specifically refers to practices that prevent the spread of disease-causing organisms. Cleaning processes, such as handwashing, are methods to achieve hygiene by removing infectious microbes, dirt, and soil.
Home hygiene is particularly crucial in preventing or minimizing the spread of diseases in various settings, including public transport, workplaces, and social settings. It involves hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, food and water hygiene, and the hygiene of environmental sites and surfaces. The concept of "targeted hygiene" is based on identifying pathogen spread routes at home and implementing hygiene practices at critical times to break the infection chain, employing a risk-based approach.
Hygiene in the home focuses on preventing pathogen spread mainly through hands, food contact surfaces, and cleaning utensils. Good home hygiene practices are essential to break the chain of infection, given that even a small "infectious dose" of some pathogens can lead to infection.
Handwashing, an integral part of hand hygiene, is crucial in preventing infectious diseases in both home and everyday life settings. The WHO recommends washing hands for at least 20 seconds before and after activities that could lead to fecal-oral transmission of disease.
Furthermore, laundry hygiene practices play a significant role in preventing disease spread via soiled clothing and household linens. Effective laundering practices are vital in managing risks associated with clothing and household linens, especially in the home setting.
Medical hygiene at home is also paramount, particularly for those at higher risk of infection, such as the elderly, patients discharged from hospitals, or individuals with compromised immune systems. This includes special medical hygiene procedures and day-to-day practices to prevent infection.
In summary, hygiene encompasses a wide array of practices crucial for health preservation and disease prevention. It's a responsibility that extends beyond personal cleanliness to include various aspects of daily life, underscoring its importance in maintaining public health and safety.
Hygiene is a set of practices performed to preserve health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases."[2] Personal hygiene refers to maintaining the body's cleanliness. Hygiene activities can be grouped into the following: home and everyday hygiene, personal hygiene, medical hygiene, sleep hygiene, and food hygiene. Home and every day hygiene includes hand washing, respiratory hygiene, food hygiene at home, hygiene in the kitchen, hygiene in the bathroom, laundry hygiene, and medical hygiene at home.
Many people equate hygiene with "cleanliness", but hygiene is a broad term. It includes such personal habit choices as how frequently to take a shower or bath, wash hands, trim fingernails, and wash clothes. It also includes attention to keeping surfaces in the home and workplace clean, including bathroom facilities. Adherence to regular hygiene practices is often regarded as a socially responsible and respectable behavior, while neglecting proper hygiene can be perceived as unclean or unsanitary, and may be considered socially unacceptable or disrespectful, while also posing a risk to public health.