If this Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it has been the importance of hygiene in maintaining health and has made us establish habits such as handwashing that are highly effective in avoiding infections.
Today we know that hygiene and health go hand in hand, but that has not been the case throughout history. In this post we will see the evolution of hygiene over the centuries and the importance of hygiene in the healthcare field.
If we analyze the definition of hygiene, we can see the close relationship it has with health: On the one hand, hygiene is all the techniques we apply for personal care and that have a positive impact on health, preventing diseases and infections. On the other hand, it is the part of medicine that tries to prolong life, preserving people's health. Furthermore, if we look for its etymology, the word hygiene comes from the Greek term "Hygieia", who was the Greek goddess of health. All in all, we can affirm that hygiene is essential for a healthy life.
Evolution of hygiene throughout history
The first civilizations in which we can observe good hygiene practices are the Egyptians and ancient Greece. The Egyptians took great care of everything related to hygiene and public health. The Greeks found that hygiene, diet and correct habits contributed to maintaining an adequate level of health.
But it was Roman culture that gave great impetus to hygiene, with great engineering works that benefited public health, such as sewers, hot water baths, tombs, etc. In addition, houses included a room with water for washing, and even noble houses had a room with a bathtub.
In the Middle Ages, baths in private homes were reserved for the nobility and wealthy. For the rest, there were numerous public baths that were used from time to time. Although they did not bathe daily, it must be said that they did clean themselves by washing their hands and face, and sometimes with a damp cloth in other areas. However, public baths were frowned upon, especially by the Church, and, over the years, they were closed.
In the Renaissance , illness was not fought with hygiene. The use of perfumes and dry scrubs replaced water, which was only used on visible parts (hands and face). Parts of the body that remained covered did not need to be cleaned.
In the 18th century, people washed little and did so dry, avoiding the use of water. It was believed that water was unhealthy, especially hot water, so people could spend their whole lives without taking a bath. It was believed that staying soaked facilitated the introduction of diseases, so people avoided bathing. When they did bathe, well into the 19th century, they did so wearing a kind of shirt or their own underwear.
An important milestone in hand hygiene in medicine occurred in 1847: the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis observed that mortality among women in labor cared for by obstetricians was up to five times higher than among those cared for by midwives. He related this to the fact that doctors and apprentices assisted women in childbirth after analyzing the corpses and their viscera in the autopsy room, so he proposed carefully washing hands with a chlorinated substance, reducing deaths by 20%. But the doctors of the time did not look favorably on being blamed for the deaths of these women, so his ideas were rejected. Semmelweis' recommendations were only accepted after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the theory of germs as the cause of infections, implementing the methods of asepsis and antisepsis in surgery.
Hygiene was established as a branch of medicine at the beginning of the 20th century in order to prevent diseases and maintain the physical and mental health of populations. Thanks to the conception of hygiene as a science, many diseases were prevented in different countries. Access to basic services such as light, gas or electricity contribute to maintaining personal and urban hygiene.
Sanitary hygiene
Sanitary hygiene is all the measures carried out in health centres to prevent infections and combat health risks for patients and professionals, such as: body hygiene of the patient, cleaning of external mucous membranes, correct maintenance of utensils used in health practices, hand washing by professionals, etc.
Environmental hygiene in any space, and especially in the healthcare field, contributes greatly to infection control. It has been estimated that more than 5% of people who pass through or enter a hospital have contracted an infection in the facilities, which is why it is considered that everything around the patient must be subjected to rigorous cleaning. This concept is very important in healthcare: We call nosocomial infection any infection that the patient acquires while in the healthcare centre and that the patient neither had nor was incubating before entering the healthcare centre. Therefore, sanitary hygiene is especially important in avoiding this type of infection.
Sanitary hygiene involves the coordination of personal hygiene and the cleaning and disinfection of utensils, spaces and hospital environments. Thus, hygiene actions will be carried out at these three levels: patients, materials used and environment.
The hygiene of the hospitalized patient is carried out with the aim of preserving the skin and mucous membranes in good condition, in this way we ensure that they carry out their protective function correctly. The nursing team is responsible for maintaining the patient's hygiene, dry or wet, and monitoring the existence of wounds and preventing pressure ulcers during hygiene .
Cleaning and disinfecting hospital equipment is essential for carrying out work in a hospital landline number list or clinic. In a hospital, a lot of work is done with single-use materials, such as gloves, gauze, etc., but there are also materials that are reused, such as surgical material, sheets, etc. In the case of reused materials, the disinfection and cleaning processes for hospital equipment and sterilization are very important. These processes are carried out daily because the lack of hygiene can increase the possibility of infections in patients.
The sterilization process destroys all existing life forms, including spores. A good example of sterilization is the one applied to surgical instruments by autoclaving.
Disinfection consists of the destruction, elimination or inhibition of all pathogenic microorganisms. However, it does not completely eliminate microbial forms, since spores are not eliminated by this action. An example of disinfection is cleaning a toilet.
We can define cleaning as the removal of any foreign material from the product using a physical-chemical procedure. In this process, water and soap or detergent are used and a wash or brushing is performed.