STAYING SAFE: BETWEEN AN INCONVENIENCE AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA.

Hey dear reader, welcome!

It has been a while; yes, I know that (wide grin). I got lost in a myriad of physical and emotional bubbles and I just had to burst them all before I am in the right frame of mind to come back here and do what we do. My sincerest apologies to all that waited earnestly in vain.

The inspiration for this piece came while caught up with one of the physical (and mental?) bubbles for three weeks. The said bubble is a three (3) weeks orientation program organised to prepare its participants for the one-year compulsory ‘National Youth Service Corp (NYSC)’ program.

Huh? NYSC?

This program is for all graduates of tertiary institutions (degree programs or polytechnic equivalents) below the age of 30 in the 36 camps strategically situated in all the 36 states of my country, Nigeria. It brings together all these graduates in three (3) batches (further divided into two streams each) and posts them randomly to states far off from where they have grown up or schooled in. The lofty aim of this is to promote unity and understanding of the cultures and traditions of other citizens of the country in regions far from where one resides or grew up in.

I grew up in a state in the northern part of the country called Kaduna and schooled in Kano, a state about 200 km away from it. However, I was posted to Oyo state, over 600 km away in the country's south-western region whence I camped with around two thousand (2000) other graduates from all over the country.

How is this all relevant?

Well, during the camp exercise, we were necessitated to adhere strictly to the COVID-19 prevention guidelines and (as expected) some voices were frustrated with this. The wearing of facemasks and the frequent intermittent washing of hands at designated points while also maintaining the minimum 6 feet apart distance at all gatherings was enforced (kudos to the organisers!) throughout our stay.

This, as can be imagined, was a herculean task that was also a bit inconvenient for the crowd of healthy and energetic youths in camp. To make matters worse, a huge percentage of the population was quite ignorant about the need for all these measures since we had all been tested immediately we stepped into camp and found to be all negative.

As I sadly watched more and more scenes of corps members throwing caution to the wind for their “convenience”, I decided a piece was to enlighten my readers on why these simple guidelines were quite relevant and indispensable especially in the light of an ongoing pandemic.

Why are COVID 19 guidelines important?

Facemasks:

These are most likely the most inconvenient, from the feeling of the plastic band on the bridge of the nose to the stifling of breaths and muffling of voices to the constant tugs on the earlobes. They, however, are indispensable!

Each time we laugh out loud, shout, sneeze, cough or even just chat with our friends, droplets of fluids are released into the air around us from our mouths and noses and these can easily be inhaled by anyone around or they can get on surfaces and picked up when anyone touches them.

The big deal of this is that our respiratory tract is covered by mucus designed to trap particles trying to follow the inhaled air into our lungs and each time we suffer from any respiratory infection, the microbes are expelled into this same mucus. The body then tries to propel forward and expel this contaminated mucus via the same pathway they came in. Some are swallowed alongside saliva into the stomach where they are rendered useless (as microbes are only active in cells where they are adapted to attack) and the stomach acid kills most. Sneezing and coughing are innate mechanisms for forcefully expelling them in large quantities. However, some are still found at the back of the throat and are still expelled alongside the fluids from these two pathways as they carry their normal functions.

The facemask, by design, covers the nose and mouth as much as possible, keeping the incoming droplet-trapped microbes outside, and trapping the ones trying to escape from our mouths and noses inside.

Fun fact: Each breath we take is moist and carries very tiny droplets of fluids from our lungs through our noses to the air around us.

Cons: facemasks need to be changed (or washed, if not disposable) as frequently as possible or the trapped germs will grow and multiply and in turn infect (or re-infect, as the case may be) the wearer.

Caution! : Facemasks should not be worn when going to bed or shared with any other person.

Washing of hands:

Quickly picture this… A young man wakes up from sleep (let us just pretend his hands did not wander to his anus while he was asleep) and quickly checks his phone for missed messages and events. He then probably walks with the phone in hand to the toilet and drops his phone on the sink (or just about any surface he finds “clean enough”. When he is done, he uses a tissue to wipe (read here and here for how unsafe that is) and picks up his now contaminated phone with contaminated hands and goes back to his room. Running late, he throws on a shirt, rinses his face and rushes off to board a taxi to go meet up with an appointment. Now the same hands are turning door handles, touching handrails and pressing elevator buttons from his room to the meeting point. At the meeting point, he quickly shakes the hands of every attendant and the meeting sets off. On his way back, he gets on a bus and is now touching the very same surfaces every other commuter is bound to touch from the bus station until he alights at his destination with those very hands.

Now, let us say he did not get into the toilet. Let us say he has a bad cough or fights off cold or has a chest infection (we are not even talking about the dreaded COVID 19 here) and had sneezed or coughed into his morning at some point in his morning hands and followed the same routine he just did.

Alternatively, let us say he shares the same toilet with a sister that is currently treating cholera or even a bout of food poisoning.

Look at the number of diseases that can be easily passed from a seemingly healthy person to hundreds and in turn thousands of other people just because a young man did not wash his hands in one morning. Now let us imagine that it is not just one young man, imagine all the young men in one city doing the same thing in just one morning. Then imagine all the young men doing it every day. Worse and worse scenarios can be painted just because one person belittles the possible effect of washing his/her hands and depends on the next person (whose health status or cleanliness he does not know).

(Sigh) Please let us all wash our hands.

Quick fact: over 2.2 million people die from the spread of diarrhoeal diseases (LINK) and hand washing is very effective at substantially reducing the risk of these diarrhoeal diseases (LINK).

How does hand washing help?

All microbes known to man depend on attachment to surface to get into their hosts. These attachment structures are usually hydrophobic (insoluble in water) in nature and once the soap is used, it chemically breaks down this attachment between the microbe and the surface it has attached to and makes it much easier to wash off from the attached surface.

Personal fact: when washing my hands, I just imagine that I have dipped both hands with fingers spread into a jar of ink and trying to use soap to wash it off. This helps me maintain the 20 seconds wash time while washing every inch of surface the “ink” could have gotten into.

CONCLUSION

The current “inconveniences” that are recommended to help us stay safe from the currently raging pandemic do go further to ensure our safety from numerous other infections that we do not pay as much attention to but are no less serious and/or deadly as the COVID 19. These measures are not to be used and dumped like the disposable medical masks we put on days after the threat of this virus is reduced but should be maintained and strictly adhered to for a better and healthier world.

P.S. in reflection of the time interval between my last article and this, I have made a personal decision to write another in a short while after this. It will be focused on educating, in the simplest terms possible, the public on how the biomedical scientist uses science and technology to carry out diagnoses of everyday health challenges.

photo credit: google images