Never Assume Hygiene Principles Are In Place
Not-so-ancient history highlights death at the hands of doctors, due to poor medical hygiene. Your being a statistic…could have been more than a close call
If you’ve ever had a peep behind the scenes of some restaurants (even hatted ones), you might have been a wee bit shocked at what passed for acceptability in terms of high-end practice.
It’s one of the reasons why I like to be able to look into some of the modern kitchens. If their habits are wanting, you’re bound to catch them doing something which will cause you to question whether or not they deserve your repeated custom.
A few years ago, on ABC television, I watched a series of shows on some of the top, hatted, Australian restaurants.
Sure, much of their ‘cuisine stingy’ food looked amazing, but, and this applies to a few restaurants, what I have come to recognize is that, the more perfect and delicious everything looks, equates to more hands having been on your food.
AND, the more hands on things, the more chance of those hands having scratched a beard, a scalp, or a rear end.That chefs will these days be gloved, means nothing. So the glove is now contaminated.
Most of that won’t kill you.
But what if the chef has testing spoons set in place and tastes from them, then sets them back in the same place, where the soup, the fish soup, ragout, or whatever is on offer, are ongoingly tested for flavor and seasoning.
What are the chances of the cross-contamination affecting at least one person?
I deliberately put soup, and fish soup together because I have a friend who is highly-allergic to fish, even the tiniest amount.
On a visit to a high-class restaurant here in Canberra with some friends, they were offered a free soup as a starter. The first thing she did was ask about the ingredients. She was assured that it had no fish stock in it.
And so they accepted the offer.
An acceptance that almost cost her, her life.
She was rushed to hospital where she spent the next few days.
That’s right! Three children could so easily have been left without a mother, because of one chef’s compromised kitchen.
Now I have no idea about the hygiene of the kitchen in the restaurant, but my guess is that spoons were not always cleaned, and maybe, at times, reused.
Believe me, reused can be life-destroying
So let’s have a look at another aspect of hygiene where lives were lost, lots of lives.
“Take the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor working in a maternity clinic in Vienna’s General Hospital in 1846.
“At that time, many women giving birth in the hospital wards were dying from what was known as childbed fever.
“As the newly appointed assistant to the first professor of obstetrics, Semmelweis took it upon himself to count the number of deaths in each of the hospital’s two maternity wards.
“One of the wards was staffed by all male doctors and medical students. The other was staffed by female midwives.
“When Semmelweis looked at the numbers, he discovered that women in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students were dying at a rate nearly five times higher than women in the midwives’ clinic.”higher than women in the midwives’ clinic.”higher than women in the midwives’ clinic.”
Clearly something was amiss
It was not until death came close to home, when a pathologist died (of childbed fever), after investigating the death of a woman who also died of that, that he knew he had to do something about it.
Imagine being pregnant in those days. Once news was out, what might be your thoughts?
Moreover, where would you elect to have your baby, if indeed, electing was up for discussion?
A clue is revealed
Up until the death of the pathologist it was assumed that this was a disease of pregnant women, but after the death of the pathologist, thoughts turned to the reality that this disease could contaminate a whole hospital.
And suddenly Semmelweis knew he was onto something. The doctors who conducted autopsies, also delivered babies, often without washing their hands!
Remember this was back in 1846, a while ago, but not that long in terms of human expectations.
What is anathema to us today, hadn’t been thought of, because if it had been, no ethical doctor would have elected to deliver a baby with unwashed hands contaminated by particles of a diseased corpse.
It stands to reason that if doctors’ hands were contaminated with disease, that could easily be passed on between newborns and their mothers.
EUREKA!
Thereafter medical staff was mandated to use a chlorine solution for hands and instrumentation. As you might imagine, statistics plummeted, and a huge medical lesson that withstands time, was learnt.
There are many improvements that can be made in hospitals today, (food for starters!) but by and large hygiene is front and center.
Yet germs can still be around, and spread. All you need is a compromised immune system, a rapidly spreading disease, and that could wipe you out forever.
As I write this article I thought about an overnight stay I had in hospital on Bougainville Island, in PNG. But that is deserving of a stand-alone article.
I’ll reserve that for another day…not boring, be assured, but it highlights the fact that we tend to presume safety, where safety perhaps is just not there.
Meantime I hope you enjoy my first article of life on the island. When you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em.
