Personal protective equipment
Simple, lightweight and effective, personal protective equipment must contribute to and promote the safety of the responder. Depending on the nature of the operation, it includes:
- a pair of disposable gloves, to prevent the risk of dangerous germs being transmitted via the hands;
- reflective strips on clothing or on a high-visibility vest, to improve the first-aider’s visibility, particularly at night;
- work gloves, to protect against the risk of cuts to the hands when handling sharp objects;
- a jacket suitable for adverse weather conditions, and, where necessary, a safety helmet if the first-aider is responding to a road traffic accident or an incident on a building site;
- a torch or head torch to work safely in the dark.
Protection against contamination
In order to understand how protective measures can reduce the risk of infection, it is necessary to be familiar with them.
The aim of the protective measures that first responders can use is to prevent the transmission of a pathogen from one person to another and to minimise the risk of first responders becoming infected with a dangerous pathogen.
To be effective, it is essential that these techniques are used whenever a victim is treated. Indeed, it is impossible to tell whether a person, even one who appears healthy, is carrying an infectious disease or not.
These protective measures involve the implementation of standard and special precautions to prevent infections.
Protection against piercing objects
It is common to come across sharp or pointed objects during an emergency response: glass shards, sharp metal, unprotected needles, etc.
Single-use gloves protect the healthcare worker from contamination by body fluids (blood, urine, saliva, etc.) but do not protect against the risk of injury from sharp objects. They must dispose of sharp or pointed objects in the collection bins for healthcare waste.
When dealing with broken glass or other sharp objects, he must wear thick work gloves and take care not to injure himself or accidentally injure anyone else.
Protection during resuscitation procedures
Although the risk of transmission via saliva is very low, direct oral artificial ventilation (mouth-to-mouth, mouth-to-nose) should be avoided if a ventilation device (manual insufflator) is available.
Vaccination
Even if a person is exposed to an infectious agent, they will not necessarily develop the disease, particularly if their body is immune to or resistant to that agent. One way of acquiring this resistance is through vaccination.
Vaccination involves injecting all or part of a killed or attenuated infectious agent into the body, thereby enabling the body’s own immune system to develop specific immunity. As this immunity may wane over time, it is necessary, for certain vaccines, to repeat the vaccination at regular intervals; this is known as a ‘booster’.
A number of vaccinations are recommended for first-aiders, usually by the medical service of the first-aider’s employer. This same service may recommend or administer other vaccinations that it deems necessary.
There is no vaccine for every single germ, which is why the protective measures described above are essential.