Hygiene: A Key to Healthy Life

Hygiene is the science and practice of maintaining good health. It works on two fronts at once. Personal hygiene is the care you give your own body - bathing, brushing teeth, washing hands, trimming nails, wearing clean clothes and eating clean food. Public (or community) hygiene is the care given to the surroundings we all share - safe drinking water, proper drainage, disposal of refuse, and control of disease-carrying animals. Health is not just the absence of disease; it is keeping the body and its environment in a state where disease never gets a foothold. The whole subject is built on one idea: prevention is far easier than cure.

Diseases are caused by tiny organisms called pathogens or germs - bacteria, viruses, protozoans, fungi and worms. Germs cannot usually jump from a sick person to a healthy one on their own; they need a route. Sometimes the route is a vehicle such as contaminated water, milk or food. Sometimes it is a vector - an animal that carries the germ. Houseflies carry germs on their hairy legs from refuse to food (a mechanical vector); the female Anopheles mosquito carries the malaria parasite inside its body (a biological vector). Cockroaches and rats spread germs too. Knowing the route is powerful, because cutting the route stops the disease.

Personal hygiene rests on four habits. Cleanliness means a daily bath, washing hands before eating and after using the toilet, brushing teeth twice a day, keeping nails short and clothes clean. Rest and sleep let the body repair itself; an adult needs about seven to eight hours of sleep. Physical exercise keeps muscles, heart and lungs strong and improves circulation. Healthy habits mean eating a balanced diet at regular times and avoiding harmful things like tobacco and alcohol. Together these four keep the body's own defences strong so that even when germs arrive, they struggle to take hold.

No matter how clean one person is, disease spreads if the surroundings are filthy, so the community must be guarded together. Safe drinking water must be supplied and protected from sewage. Refuse and rubbish must be collected and disposed of so flies and rats find nothing to feed on. Drains must carry away waste water without stagnating, because still water breeds mosquitoes. Disease carriers are controlled by removing their breeding places, covering food and water, and using nets and screens. Public hygiene is the reason clean cities have far less cholera, typhoid and malaria than crowded, unsanitary ones.