The HSE's Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is reminding schools to continue to raise awareness around hand hygiene and cough etiquette. To help improve respiratory hygiene in primary and secondary schools eye-catching posters are available to order from www.healthpromotion.ie.
You can find out about the Catch It, Bin It, Kill It campaign in the news2day report above!
Many children learned to sneeze and cough into their arm or elbow as part of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Continuing to follow these simple steps is vital to improving respiratory hygiene and in reducing the spread of infection.
It is a fact that the ten best things to spread bugs amongst children are the ten fingers on their hands. We can stop these bugs in their tracks if we can help children to follow some simple steps. The message is catch it, bin it, kill it.
Younger children are at increased risk for contracting infectious diseases because they:
- tend to sneeze and cough into their hands
- are grouped together and are exposed to many new germs
- have immune systems that are not fully developed to fight germs
- have personal habits that spread germs such as thumb sucking, rubbing eyes and putting things in their mouths
The posters have separate versions for primary schools and secondary schools; they are printed in Irish on one side and English on the reverse. They are aimed at assisting teachers to highlight key respiratory hygiene messages.
We also have an extremely useful online resource for teachers and parents www.e-bug.eu. eBug is a free educational resource for classroom and home use. It enables fun and accessible learning for all students around microorganisms, the spread, prevention and treatment of infection.
The school section of the website includes:
- detailed lesson plans
- fun student worksheets
- extension activities
- animations
- activity demonstrations.
There are lots of hand hygiene tips and videos on www.hse.ie/infectioncontrol. Posters can be ordered on www.healthpromotion.ie.
