source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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.

1. Washing Hands. 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