Kids And Germs: Stopping The Spread of Germs and Viruses
Kids And Germs: A book on the topic of kids and germs has surfaced. I like this book because it covers various ways that germs spread, how we can safeguard kids from these germs and , where these germs can be found. The name of the book is Germ Proof Your Kids- Here is an excerpt:
Kids And Germs : How Germs Spread
Other People
Far and away the most common and important source of human infectious diseases is other humans. From typhoid Mary Mallon to Patient Zero Gaetan Dugard, the person thought to have first introduced AIDs in the United States, humans have always politically affected other humans. We are after all a social species living in intimate contact with others who like ourselves harbor billions of germs per person- and we find ample ways to share them among ourselves .
The underlying theme of human to human transmission is straight forward contagious body fluids from one person are acquired by another. Disgusting but true! Every episode of your kids common cold flue, chicken pox, strep throat, lice, and warts come from their contact with someone else who has the malady. The same holds true for potentially lethal diseases like AIDs, Hepatitis,and Tuberculosis . Whoever gives an infection to your kid first got it from someone they were in contact with and so forth back far enough to raise chicken and egg question about this apparently endless perpetuation of original illness.
Humans have developed numerous approaches to sharing germs: inhaling, impaling, ingesting, injecting, and impacting ( I needed a word for touching that started with an “I” to complete the alliteration, hence, impacting sorry.) Each germ, in turn, has developed a preferred route for Infecting humans although,some enlightened microbes have adapted to take advantage of more than one path to their daily meal. The following sections of our other people category review the germs options for human to human transmission, direct contact, droplets, airborne transmission, blood, breast milk, and indirect contact.
Direct Contact. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Direct contact including touching, kissing , and sex is the most common and most important path that germs take from victim to victim. The hands of a karate or judo expert can be a lethal weapons but as you”ll read in chapter 9 your kids hands may also be lethal weapons even if they’ve never practiced the martial arts. Hands not only carry the germs that are expected to be found on the skin, they also carry the germs that kids have coughed into them , sneezed into them, and wiped onto them after going to the bathroom. And hands aren’t the only perpetrators, kids lips, tongues, and other mucous membranes are often in direct contact with their counterparts in other kids.
Most germs that live relatively on the skin are bacteria . Of those that cause infection, staphylococci (staph), and streptococci (strep) are the most common. As you remember from chapter 1 most staph and strep hare harmless but some acquire genes that give them greater potency allowing them to produce toxins or enzymes that facilitates a bacterium’s ability to penetrate beneath the skin and invade deeper tissues or get into the blood stream and spread through out the body. Below the belt gastrointestinal bacteria, like Escherichia coli, live on the skin around the anus. When kids wipe and don’t wash those germs are ready for hand go hand combat (see chapter 9). In addition to the ubiquitous E. Coli , all the bacteria that are shed from kids with gastroenteritis and dysentery ( severe gastroenteritis ) can travel on unwashed hands – salmonella , shigella and campylobacter to name but three. This makes daycare centers where pre potty trained kids roam unique amplifiers of gastroenteritis (see below).
The mucous membranes of the mouth and nose are also heavily colonized with common bacteria that usually cause no harm and whose identities are too esoteric to review here. Click here to purchase cover your cough tees.
