Mencegah penyakit dan mengawal jangkitan di rumah

Kuman ada di sekeliling kita. Tetapi, jangan khuatir. Kebanyakannya adalah tidak merbahaya. Ada yang memberi manfaat, seperti bakteria dalam usus yang membantu penghadaman. Apa yang penting adalah melindungi keluarga anda daripada kuman yang menyebabkan jangkitan.

Bagaimana kuman tersebar?

Bakteria merbahaya dan kuman lain boleh dibawa ke rumah melalui pengunjung atau pun haiwan peliharaan, atau pun makanan dan minuman yang tercemar.

Bagaimana ia tersebar kepada kita? Membersih permukaan tercemar tanpa kebersihan yang sewajarnya (seperti memakai kain yang tidak dibasuh dengan kerap) boleh menyebarkan kuman ke kawasan lain. Tanpa anda sedari, kita juga mengutip kuman pada tangan. Ia boleh disebarkan melalui apa-apa saja benda yang kita sentuh, sehinggalah kita membasuh tangan.

Jika seseorang mengalami penyakit berjangkit seperti selesema, titisan air kecil dari mulut mereka membawa kuman ke dalam udara apabila mereka batuk, bersin atau pun bernafas. Ia boleh mencemarkan apa jua permukaan, atau menjangkiti orang lain yang menghirup udara.

Inilah yang dipanggil rantaian jangkitan – bakteria merbahaya dan kuman lain dipindahkan dari seseorang kepada orang lain dan menyebabkan jangkitan. Mujurlah rantaian ini boleh diputuskan.

Memutuskan rantaian jangkitan

Cara terbaik untuk menghalang penyebaran kuman adalah melalui kebersihan yang baik. Berikut adalah cara yang dapat membantu:

Basuh tangan dengan kerap – terutama sekali sebelum makan, sebelum dan selepas menyediakan makanan, dan selepas batuk, bersin atau menggunakan tandas atau menyalin lampin. Tutup hidung atau mulut dengan tisu apabila anda batuk atau bersin. Terus buang mana-mana tisu yang telah digunakan ke dalam tong sampah dan basuh tangan anda. Uruskan dan sediakan makanan dengan selamat. Bersihkan tangan dan permukaan dengan kerap, asingkan makanan yang mentah dan telah dimasak, masak makanan dengan teliti dan sejukkan makanan yang segar dan dimasak untuk memperlahankan pertumbuhan bakteria. Vaksin (atau imunisasi) adalah kaedah terbaik untuk melindungi diri daripada jangkitan serius. Pastikan keluarga anda diberikan vaksin terkini yang disarankan oleh pakar penjagaan kesihatan. Bersihkan dan basmi kuman permukaan dengan kerap, terutama sekali permukaan yang bersentuhan dengan makanan dan yang kerap dipegang seperti pili, pemegang pintu dan telefon. Bersih atau basmi kuman: Apa perbezaannya?

Membersih bermaksud menanggalkan kotoran dan kuman tertentu, biasanya menggunakan bahan pencuci dan membilas dengan air panas. Untuk barang-barang kecil (seperti kutleri dan alat memasak), ia sudah cukup untuk ia selamat digunakan.

Membasmi kuman bermaksud membunuh kebanyakan kuman yang ada. Ia amat penting untuk permukaan yang besar dan tetap, di mana membilas sahaja tidak cukup (seperti kaunter memasak, tandas, sinki dan gagang telefon). Membasmi permukaan ini dengan kerap adalah satu-satunya cara untuk menghalang penyebaran kuman dan bakteria merbahaya.

Ingat, rumah yang bersih pun masih boleh diceroboh oleh bakteria merbahaya. Layari laman web kami untuk maklumat lanjut tentang penyakit yang biasa dijangkiti dan nasihat untuk melindungi diri anda dan keluarga tersayang.

Video teknologi dalam bidang mikrobiologi

Video-video di bawah merupakan contoh teknologi yang digunakan pada hari ini untuk memudahkan lagi proses-proses dalam bidang mikrobiologi.

Good bacteria!

Think all germs are bad? Not so fast—did you know some are good for you?

Scientifically, germs are defined as microorganisms like parasites, fungi, bacteria, and viruses, which can make us sick. But research has found that, in fact, we need a fair amount of the good ones to be healthy. Many bacteria are considered to be “good germs;” yes, some can cause illness, but others can be helpful in fighting off harmful invaders, particularly in our intestinal tract.

Our gut contains tens of trillions of microorganisms. We also have them on our skin, in our mouth, and so on, making up almost 5 pounds of our body weight. Clusters of them are called microbiota. Some of them are common to everyone, but others are unique to you alone and get formed during birth (if vaginal delivery) or right after (if Caesarian section).

As you grow, these microbiota evolve and develop from exposure to your environment and diet. Japanese people, for example, can easily digest seaweed, thanks to specific enzymes they acquire from repeated exposure to marine bacteria.

bacteria in stomach

Our microbiota are considered to play a critical role in moderating our immune system, and yet, according to Michael Pollan in The New York Times article “Some of My Best Friends are Germs,” Westerners have eliminated many beneficial bacteria from our environment and diet over the past 60 years. He suggests not enough bacterial diversity may be causing us to be unable to fight off some of the more severe infections we are exposed to, with serious long-term implications.

C-difficile is one particularly insidious bug caused by bad bacteria and often caught by patients following surgery in the hospital. Antibiotics used to control the infection kill both the bad and good bacteria. Often, patients don’t get better, getting stuck in a long-term antibiotic drug spiral and suffering debilitating intestinal symptoms. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year reported on a new procedure where germs (bacteria from feces) from a healthy individual are injected into a sick person. The success of this treatment was so dramatic that midway through the study, the control subjects who were receiving traditional antibiotics were taken off them and given this treatment. The cure appears to work by restoring the gut’s normal balance of bacteria (bad and good), effectively fighting off the illness.

Bacteria

Bacteria constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a number of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals. Bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep portions of Earth's crust. Bacteria also live in symbiotic and parasitic relationships with plants and animals.

There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water. There are approximately 5×1030 bacteria on Earth, forming a biomass which exceeds that of all plants and animals. Bacteria are vital in recycling nutrients, with many of the stages in nutrient cycles dependent on these organisms, such as the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere and putrefaction. In the biological communities surrounding hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds such as hydrogen sulphide and methane to energy.

On 17 March 2013, researchers reported data that suggested bacterial life forms thrive in the Mariana Trench, which with a depth of up to 11 kilometres is the deepest part of the Earth's oceans. Other researchers reported related studies that microbes thrive inside rocks up to 580 metres below the sea floor under 2.6 kilometres of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States.

According to one of the researchers,"You can find microbes everywhere — they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are." Most bacteria have not been characterized, and only about half of the phyla of bacteria have species that can be grown in the laboratory. The study of bacteria is known as bacteriology, a branch of microbiology. There are approximately ten times as many bacterial cells in the human flora as there are human cells in the body, with the largest number of the human flora being in the gut flora, and a large number on the skin.

The vast majority of the bacteria in the body are rendered harmless by the protective effects of the immune system, and some are beneficial. However, several species of bacteria are pathogenic and cause infectious diseases, including cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy, and bubonic plague. The most common fatal bacterial diseases are respiratory infections, with tuberculosis alone killing about 2 million people per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

In developed countries, antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections and are also used in farming, making antibiotic resistance a growing problem. In industry, bacteria are important in sewage treatment and the breakdown of oil spills, the production of cheese and yogurt through fermentation, and the recovery of gold, palladium, copper and other metals in the mining sector, as well as in biotechnology, and the manufacture of antibiotics and other chemicals. Once regarded as plants constituting the class Schizomycetes, bacteria are now classified as prokaryotes.

Unlike cells of animals and other eukaryotes, bacterial cells do not contain a nucleus and rarely harbour membrane-bound organelles. Although the term bacteria traditionally included all prokaryotes, the scientific classification changed after the discovery in the 1990s that prokaryotes consist of two very different groups of organisms that evolved from an ancient common ancestor. These evolutionary domains are called Bacteria and Archaea.