Infection risk and neutropenia
Managing your risk of infection
There are ways to lower your risk of getting an infection if you have blood cancer.
On this page we’ve listed things you can do to help you lower your risk of infection. Some will be things we've all been more aware of since the coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted how simple hygiene practices and social distancing can protect us from infection.
Your healthcare team will also give you advice on how to minimise your risk of getting an infection. They may provide you with a treatment alert card or diary which explains this in more detail.
If anyone in your medical team tells you to go to hospital because of a suspected infection, you should go at once. Infections can be severe and can get worse quickly.
See also our information on coronavirus.
Basic hygiene tips
- Clean your hands frequently with soap and water or hand sanitiser.
- Clean cuts, scrapes and grazes with warm water, soap and an antiseptic.
- Avoid sharing food, cups, cutlery or personal items such as toothbrushes.
- Make sure your food is stored and cooked properly (see food safety below).
- Avoid handling any animal waste, such as litter trays or manure (it’s generally safe to pet or stroke animals, as long as you wash your hands thoroughly afterwards).
- Avoid changing the water in flower vases.
- Avoid people who have infections or who are sick.
- Avoid crowded places like public transport, festivals and shopping centres.
- Wear protective gloves when gardening and doing housework.
- Take good care of your mouth.
- Shower or bath daily and use lotion to stop your skin from becoming dry and cracked.
- Try to keep fit and well by eating a healthy diet and staying as active as possible.
If you have a low neutrophil count (you’re neutropenic), you should take extra care with food safety. You may also need to avoid foods that have a higher risk of causing infection. See our page on eating safely with neutropenia.
For more information and tips about avoiding infection, you can order our a free copy of our infection fact sheet.
Food safety
If you have blood cancer, especially if it causes neutropenia (a low level of white blood cells called neutrophils), it’s important to follow food safety and hygiene advice about shopping, cleaning, storing, preparing and reheating food. This will help you to reduce the chances of getting an infection from your food (food poisoning).
- When buying pre-packaged food, make sure the packaging is not damaged or broken.
- Avoid buying food from fridges or freezers that are overloaded, as the food might not be cold enough.
- Buy your chilled and frozen foods last on your shop and get them home as quickly as possible. If you’re not able to get your shopping home immediately, use an insulated container or cool bag to keep food at the right temperature.
- Always check "use by" and "best before" dates on packaging before you buy food.
- Avoid buying food from fridges or counters where raw and cooked meats are not separated.
- Follow storage instructions on the packaging of food, including best before and use by dates.
- Keep your fridge at 5°C or below . You can check the temperature with a fridge thermometer.
- Don’t overload your fridge, as this will increase the temperature inside.
- Always cover food to prevent germs spreading.
- Store raw or defrosting meat or fish at the bottom of your fridge in a covered container, so it doesn’t leak or drip.
- Don’t put hot food in your fridge, as this will increase the temperature in the fridge, making all of the food less safe to eat. Cool food at room temperature and put in the fridge within one to two hours.
- Eat leftovers you’ve stored in the fridge within two days.
- Your freezer temperature should be around -18°C. Make sure food is still frozen solid when you take it out of your freezer.
- Defrost food in the fridge, not at room temperature.
- If you don’t have time to defrost in the fridge, use a microwave on the defrost setting straight before cooking.
- Make sure food is thoroughly defrosted before cooking.
- Don’t refreeze food you’ve defrosted.
- Wash your hands with soap and warm water before preparing, cooking or eating food, and after touching raw food (especially meat).
- Thoroughly dry your hands using a separate towel or kitchen paper. Don’t use a tea towel.
- If you can’t wash your hands (for example at a picnic) use hand-sanitising wipes or hand gel.
- Cover any cuts and grazes with a waterproof plaster.
- Keep pets away from work surfaces, food and dishes.
- Wash or change dish cloths, tea towels, oven gloves and sponges regularly. Make sure they are dry before using them again.
- Clean your work surfaces, chopping boards and knives regularly using warm, soapy water or a disinfecting cleaning product suitable for food surfaces.
- Change or wash your chopping boards and utensils between preparing raw and cooked items, to avoid spreading germs from raw food. Ideally you should have three boards, which you might like to colour code to make things easier: one for raw meat, one for cooked meat and one for other foods.
- Wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly before eating.
- Don’t wash meat before cooking. It won’t get rid of harmful germs and could splash them onto other surfaces in the kitchen.
- Pre-heat the oven to make sure food is cooked at the recommended temperature.
- Cook all food thoroughly and make sure it’s piping hot all the way through before eating.
- Cook meat until all the juices run clear.
- Always follow the manufacturer’s guidelines and don’t reduce cooking times.
- Don’t reheat food more than once.
- It’s best to avoid reheating rice or takeaway food, as harmful bacteria can survive the reheating process.
Find out more about side effects
Tips and real stories about side effects like hair loss, peripheral neuropathy, brain fog, sleep problems, infection risk, nausea and sore mouth.