Pomerene taking germ prevention to the schools
As the flu continues to reel in students all over the county this fall, Pomerene Hospital has taken an active role in spearheading attempts to educate the county's youth as to how they can best combat the flu, and H1N1 in particular.Teams of specialists from Pomerene Hospital are going to schools throughout East and West Holmes School Districts, discussing techniques, causes and ways to prevent the flu, as well as passing out pamphlets for students to take home.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, a team from Pomerene was at Hiland High and Middle School, talking to the entire student body about precautions they can take to remain healthy this winter.
"We've seen the H1N1 virus attacking the younger population, which is out of the norm for most flus," said RN Mary Ellen Hershberger. "Teenagers have been hit the hardest, and this particular flu strain has moved in much earlier. Usually it hits hardest around February, but this one has been moving quickly, and we expect to see even more between Thanksgiving and Christmas."
That has been backed up by the number of students missing school on both ends of the county due to flu-like symptoms.
While there are two types of flu (A and B), H1N1 is a Type A virus. While there are other Type A viruses out there, Holmes County has been treating all Type A flus as though they were H1N1, mainly because the cost of testing for the H1N1 virus is so steep.
"It's expensive to have H1N1 confirmed, so the county has been treating cases as though they are H1N1," said Hershberger.
The crew visiting Hiland High and Middle School included Hershberger, respiratory therapist Jim Valentine and Kim Neal, LPN. Together, they put on an informative assembly that was lively, but hammered home the points they wanted to convey to the students.
The main points, including washing hands often and thoroughly, as well as how to properly cough into your sleeve instead of your hands, were discussed in some pretty unique ways. Perhaps the most memorable was the way they had the first person in each aisle wet their hand and then put it in salt, which signified germs. They then shook hands with the person next to them, and so on down the aisle until the last person. Watching the student's reactions as they realized that they had salt on their own hands despite being five or six people away from the first person was a great way to drive home their point.
The other way the group pounded home their points were by offering fascinating facts, like:
The average school desk has 400 times more bacteria on it than that of a toilet seat; sneezes travel at 80 miles per hour and reach 12 feet; and there are between 1.5 and five million bacteria per square inch of skin on the human body.
"H1N1 spreads very easily," said Hershberger. "One microorganism introduced into the body in the morning can spread to eight million by night, which is exactly why it is so important to know all of the ways we can reduce and eliminate germs."
They also talked about songs you can sing to typify how long you should wash your hands in order to properly kill germs and bacteria, songs which generally take 20 seconds to sing, such as the ABC song or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Hershberger even had teacher Aaron Rossetti and a pair of students come up front to sing Pomerene's anti-flu song, Stop: In the Name of Germs.
With the threat of flu already far too real, Hiland High and Middle School has already taken steps to place hand sanitizer throughout the school and the Perry Reese Center, and is encouraging students to use it as much as they feel necessary in order to fight off the spread of germs.
"We all need to work at practicing these behaviors to help reduce the spreading of viruses and germs," said Hiland principal Matt Johnson to the student body. "The things we have learned today are important. We have to also recognize when we don't feel well, and stay at home when we have flu-like symptoms and try not to come to school and work through illnesses."
The Pomerene staff members conducting the seminars at schools are currently in the midst of scouring both school districts for schools in which to present their program. They are even seeking to get into some of the parochial schools.
"We're going to Zion Christian and we have put out feelers to the parochial schools about visiting," said Hershberger. "Because of the severity, we want to get to as many schools as we can and educate kids on how they can help us help each other."
For more information on how to fight the flu, go to www.flu.gov.