Mohali
4 May 2019
DIVYA AZAD
Global Hand Hygiene day is celebrated worldwide on the 5th of May every year to highlight the importance of clean care that is proven to save many lives. The campaign theme is rolled out every year by WHO along with many educational resources and tools to help healthcare organization adapt and adopt them as per their needs.
Fortis Mohali organized a circle of solidarity to spread the message within the hospital amongst the healthcare workers and people visiting the hospital. The healthcare workers joined hands in support of this cause and took a pledge for abiding by five moments of Hand hygiene.
Dr. Anita Sharma, Head Lab Medicine, said, “Host of fun, games and educational activities like Infection prevention fashion show, workshops for students, patient engagement sessions, and staff appreciations have been planned for the coming week.”
She added, this awareness campaign is not just for hospitals but for anyone associated with prevention of diseases and hence calls on everyone, including the healthcare policymakers, to be inspired by the global movement to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), i.e. achieving better health and well-being for all people at all ages, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.
Infection prevention and control, including hand hygiene, is critical to achieve UHC as it is a practical and evidence-based approach with demonstrated impact on quality of care and patient safety across all levels of the health system, she added.
Five key moment have been advocated by the WHO involving contact with a patient and surroundings. Cleaning hands before and after touching a patient assumes a great significance in this context. In spite of so much of evidence available, the compliance to these key moments amongst healthcare workers remains abysmally poor, chiefly due to lack of awareness that also leads to issues around attitude and behaviour.
In the community however, there are other factors also that can lead to infectious diseases for example lack of access to water and hygienic living conditions. Many of the disease like diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections are easily preventable if one were to adopt the healthy practices of clean hands and cough etiquette.
Awareness campaigns like this help in raising the awareness on the need of hand hygiene in our day to day practice, empowers the staff and patients to speak up for the cause and makes a statement that we care, said Dr. Anita Sharma.
