5 Tips to Help Prevent Infections
Common illnesses, like the flu, can quickly become dangerous for a person with sickle cell disease. The best defense is to take simple steps to help prevent infections.
Hand Washing
Washing your hands is one of the best ways to help prevent getting an infection. People with sickle cell disease, their family, and other caretakers should wash their hands with soap and clean water many times each day. If you don’t have soap and water, you can use gel hand cleaners with alcohol in them.
Times to wash your hands:
BEFORE
- Making food
- Eating
AFTER
- Using the bathroom
- Blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
- Shaking hands
- Touching people or things that can carry germs, such as:
- Diapers or a child who has used the toilet
- Food that is not cooked (raw meat, raw eggs, or unwashed vegetables)
- Animals or animal waste
- Trash
- A sick person
Food Safety
Bacteria, called salmonella, in some foods can be especially harmful to children with sickle cell disease. How to stay safe when cooking and eating:
- Wash hands, cutting boards, counters, knives, and other utensils after they touch uncooked foods.
- Wash vegetables and fruit well before eating them.
- Cook meat until it’s well done. The juices should run clear and there should be no pink inside.
- Do not eat raw or undercooked eggs. Raw eggs might be hiding in homemade hollandaise sauce, caesar and other homemade salad dressings, tiramisu, homemade ice cream, homemade mayonnaise, cookie dough, and frostings.
- Do not eat raw or unpasteurized milk or other dairy products (cheeses). Make sure these foods have a label that says they are “pasteurized.”
Reptiles
Bacteria, called salmonella, that some reptiles have can be especially harmful to children with SCD. Make sure children stay away from turtles, snakes, and lizards.
Vaccines
Vaccines are a great way to prevent many serious infections. Children with sickle cell disease should get all the regular childhood vaccines, plus a few extra.
The extra ones are:
- Flu vaccine every year after 6 months of age.
- A pneumococcal vaccine (called 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine) at 2 and 5 years of age.
- Meningococcal vaccine (for some children).
Click here for the regular childhood vaccination schedule. Don’t forget to add the extra vaccines listed previously for children with sickle cell disease.
Click here to find information for parents about vaccinations.
Adults should have the flu vaccine every year, as well as the pneumococcal vaccine and any others recommended by a doctor.
Penicillin
Take penicillin (or other antibiotic prescribed by a doctor) every day until at least 5 years of age.
Contact Us:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities
Division of Blood Disorders
1600 Clifton Road
MS E-87
Atlanta, GA 30333 - 800-CDC-INFO
(800-232-4636)
TTY: (888) 232-6348
New Hours of Operation
8am-8pm ET/Monday-Friday
Closed Holidays - cdcinfo@cdc.gov