Despite its simplicity, hand hygiene is still poorly practiced in many health care facilities.
These deficiencies in infrastructure, practices and culture have tremendous consequences on patient and health worker safety and so on all people’s lives.
A variety of basic actions can be used to prevent and control infections. WHO’s guidelines on core components of infection prevention and control programmes promote the implementation of standard precautions such as: Description: Health care in Sierra Leone crippled in the post-conflict period. A lack of electricity, water and basic supplies used for infection prevention and control made safe deliveries difficult.
At one hospital – the Bo District Hospital – 60% of women who gave birth through caesarian-section got sepsis due to infected wounds. To address these issues, development partners in Sierra Leone that worked on maternal and newborn health shifted the focus of their programs. Boreholes were drilled, water storage facilities were introduced and a generator was supplied to the operating theatre of the Bo District Hospital. Staff was trained in water sanitation and hygiene and wound care. Place:
Bo District Hospital, Sierra Leone. Setting: Maternity unit Finding: Within a period of 3 months, post-caesarian wound sepsis decreased from 60% to 10%. Use of antibiotics decreased dramatically. Within 6 months, more than twice as many women chose to deliver at this maternity unit since their improved services quickly became known to patients. Inclusion of Real-Time Hand Hygiene Observation and Feedback in a Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy in Low-Resource SettingsDescription:This prospective quality improvement study evaluated preintervention and postintervention adherence with the 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene, as suggested by the WHO. A novel data collection, analysis, and visualization tool called the Hand Hygiene Observation Toolkit (HHOT) was developed to monitor adherence to hand hygiene guidelines among health care workers. Place: Anka General Hospital and Noma Children’s Hospital, Nigeria. Setting: Pediatric and postoperative wards. Finding:Overall hand hygiene adherence increased from 32.4% to 57.4% This suggests that the novel tool used in this study may contribute to comprehensive IPC strategies and strengthening of hand hygiene behavior among all healthcare workers in healthcare facilities in low-resource settings. A selection of resources for basic interventions are found in the table below. In addition, many countries have their own guidelines that are adapted to the local circumstances. Educational materials are collected in RAISE AWARENESS: Education and training. For tools and guidance how to measure the effects of interventions, go to MEASURE. Selected Resources
What is the single effective most effective way to prevent infections?Take action and practice hand hygiene often. Use soap and water or an alcoholbased hand rub to clean your hands. It only takes 15 seconds to practice hand hygiene.
What does the CDC recommend to prevent the spread of infection?Clean your hands, cover coughs and sneezes, and follow recommendations or local or state orders for wearing masks to reduce the spread of infection. Protect high-risk populations. Certain groups of people have a higher risk of developing serious illness from COVID-19.
What is the single most effective way to prevent infections and disease transmission?Hand washing is one of the simplest, most effective ways to prevent the spread of many types of infection and illness, including foodborne illness.
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