Preventing infection
What you need to know:
- There are treatments that can help prevent infection, including vaccinations and preventive antibiotics.
- Following general hygiene and food safety advice is also important and may help you feel more in control.
Lowering your infection risk
There are lots of ways your hospital team or GP can help lower your risk of getting infections.
These include vaccinations and other preventive medicines like antibiotics, anti-viral and anti-fungal medicines. They aim to stop infections happening, rather than treat them afterwards.
There are also lots of things you can do to protect yourself, including following hygiene and food safety advice.
If you do get symptoms of an infection, you will usually be treated for it.
Vaccinations (jabs)
Because blood cancer weakens your immune system, your doctor will probably recommend you have certain vaccinations. You may be advised to have vaccinations against:
- covid-19
- seasonal flu
- pneumonia (chest infection)
- shingles (infection of a nerve and the skin around it).
People with weak immune systems shouldn’t have live vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), chickenpox and yellow fever. Covid, flu and pneumonia vaccines are not live, so they are safe to have.
If you are offered a shingles vaccine, you can safely have the Shingrix vaccine, which is not live.
Find out more about vaccinations and staying safe with blood cancer.
Covid is still with us and can be dangerous for people with blood cancer. We have up-to-date information about how to get covid-19 vaccinations and current covid treatments.
It may be a good idea for people you live with to get covid and flu vaccinations if they can.
If anyone in your household needs a live vaccine such as MMR, discuss the timing with your GP or hospital team. There is a possible risk of passing on viruses when close contacts have live vaccines.
Vaccinations after a stem cell transplant
A stem cell transplant basically replaces your immune system with a brand new one. This means you will lose any immunity you have built up from childhood vaccinations and will need to have them again.
Your hospital team will advise you how and when to get your childhood vaccinations.
Contact with infectious diseases
If you have been in contact with someone who has an infectious illness like chickenpox or flu, contact your hospital team or GP for advice as soon as you can. If you have been close to someone with covid, read our information about covid tests and treatments.
Preventive medicine (prophylaxis)
Doctors know that some cancer drugs lower your white blood cell count and make it more likely for you to get infections. So you may be given preventive medicine alongside blood cancer treatment.
This is called prophylactic treatment or prophylaxis. It includes antibiotics, anti-viral and anti-fungal treatments. For example, you may be advised to take aciclovir, an anti-viral drug that can prevent shingles.
Tell your doctor if you know you are allergic to antibiotics or any other medicines.
Antibodies
Antibodies are proteins in your blood that stick to germs and help your white blood cells destroy them.
You may need an infusion of antibodies (known as immunoglobulins). These come from donated blood plasma (the liquid part of the blood). They can be given through a drip into a vein or as an injection under the skin.
What to ask your hospital team
Here are some questions you may want to ask your hospital team about medicines to help prevent infection:
- What vaccinations do I need?
- When should I have the vaccinations I need?
- Which vaccinations are safe for me to have?
- (After a stem cell transplant) How do I get my childhood vaccinations done again?
- Do I need to take any medicines to prevent infection?
- How long will I take the medicine for?
Self-help tips
There are simple things you can do to manage your risk of getting an infection.
Many of these things will be familiar from the covid pandemic, which made everyone more aware about ways to stop the spread of infection.
While it’s important to manage your risk of infection, it’s also important to live your life and do the things you enjoy.
We have ideas about how to make balanced decisions about staying safe while having a good quality of life.
If you have specific questions about specific activities, look at our infection FAQs page or call our free Support Line.
If worries about infection become overwhelming, talk to your hospital team. They may be able to set your mind at rest or refer you for psychological support.
Read our information about worries and concerns around infection for other places to get help.
Keeping your home clean
"Keeping your home clean is important while you're having treatment. This takes a lot of time and asks a lot of your family.
We took this to the extreme and there was a full cleaning schedule for daily versus biweekly versus weekly activities for my partner and my parents. One way to reduce this would be to have certain rooms you go into and others you don't."
Ritesh, diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2022
General hygiene
- Clean your hands often with soap and water or use hand sanitiser.
- Clean cuts, scrapes and grazes immediately with warm water, soap and an antiseptic.
- Take good care of your mouth by brushing your teeth regularly and using mouthwash.
- Use a soft bristle toothbrush so you don’t make your gums bleed and keep your toothbrush away from other people’s toothbrushes.
- Use moisturising lotion after a shower or bath to stop your skin from becoming dry and cracked.
- Avoid sharing food, cups, cutlery or personal items such as toothbrushes and towels.
- Wear protective gloves when gardening and doing housework.
- If you can, avoid handling animal waste, such as litter trays or manure.
- Wash your hands thoroughly after petting or stroking animals.
- Avoid changing the water in flower vases because it is a source of bacteria.
- Try to keep fit and well by eating a healthy diet and staying active.
Food safety
Everyone should take care over food hygiene to avoid getting infections from food (food poisoning).
If you have a low neutrophil count (you’re neutropenic), you should take extra care. You may also need to avoid certain foods that have a higher risk of causing infection. See our page on eating safely with neutropenia and talk to your hospital team.
- Make sure food 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 stored next to each other.
- Follow storage instructions on the packaging of food, including best before and use by dates.
- Keep your fridge at 5°C or below.
- 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 the food less safe to eat. Cool food at room temperature and put it 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: 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 reheating.
If you are neutropenic (you have low numbers of white blood cells called neutrophils), read our information about eating safely with neutropenia.
Avoiding high risk situations
Ask your hospital team if you should avoid crowded places like public transport, shopping centres, cinemas and sports events. Ask how long you will need to do this.
If you are advised to avoid busy places but this is difficult to do, consider wearing a face mask. FFP3 masks give the best protection.
If you are meeting someone you know is ill, ideally postpone seeing them and consider meeting outside. Always try to plan ahead and discuss what you need to meet safely.
For help explaining to people why you may not be able to see them, see our information about telling other people.
Find out which activities are highest risk, and how to balance that information with your personal priorities.