WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands
SL: CYH Newsletter
4 May 2013
Dear Colleagues,
This year, once again, 5 May is a great success, with increased registrations for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, new countries joining and new Member States pledging to combat health care-associated infection and launching national hand hygiene campaigns. For the fifth year, this global campaign has catalysed commitment and attention around handhygiene in health care as the simplest and most effective way to reduce the risk of infection. Celebrations commenced on 3 May and will continue at least until 7 May and the WHO call to action has gathered amazing global response. Special focus has been encouraging patients and their family members to join health workers in their efforts to practice good hand hygiene. In many countries and institutions, this 5 May has also represented an opportunity to renewefforts on hand hygiene monitoring and feedback. In addition, given the current concerns about the coronavirus and H7N9 outbreaks, 5 May has been the occasion to remind health-care workers and the public about the crucial importance of hand hygiene and otherinfection control practices to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.
In this edition:
1.Great thanks and congratulations on 5 May 2013! 2.What have we achieved together in 2013? 3.What’s new on 5 May 2013 4.Upcoming conferences 1.Great thanks and congratulations on 5 May 2013!
We are very grateful for the tremendous support provided by many stakeholders for 5 May 2013. These have played a crucial role in achieving this year’s successand are to be commended. Once again WHO regional and country offices and collaborating centers have been very proactive in spreading messages and gathering new registrations. Ministries of health and national and sub-national campaigns in many countries havededicated resources and energies to organize national activities and events, with special focus on patient participation. Patient organizations and champions and the WHO Patients for Patient Safety programme have provided invaluable input to our recent documentsand helped to spread the message about hand hygiene promotion through the public. Centers for disease control and prevention, societies, networks, academic institutions and initiatives in the field of infection control have given tremendous support to 5 Mayby advertising it through their web sites, social networks and communications. The Private Organizations for Patient Safety network has provided a lot of energy and innovation to spreading the word on the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign and the WHO 'My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene', as per WHO recommendations. WHO has again provided links to web pages which have featured SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands 5 May and associated hand hygiene activities or have spread messages through their social networks and communications.
Many people are following us on Twitter (@WHO) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/worldhealthorganization).
This global reach and commitment is truly unique and makes us confident we can make patients safer while receiving health care, including through their own activeparticipation in achieving this.
Sincere and great thanks and congratulations to all our stakeholders and to each institution around the world where energies have been dedicated to organize activitiesand participate in 5 May 2013!
2.What have we achieved together in 2013?
We are delighted to announce that over the past year 12 new countries have joined SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands with new registrations. These are Algeria, Djibouti, Iceland, Guyana, Kiribati, Lesotho, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Namibia, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, and Togo. In addition, three new national campaigns have been recently launched in Algeria, Benin, New Zealand. This is again an incredible achievement for these countries that have chosen to focus on this topic while they face many other challenges. Thank you to those individuals who led in achieving these registrations!
According to the 1 May 2013 update, the number of facilities registered for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands has now exceeded 15 700! The updated numbers are in fact 15 782 facilities from 168 countries, corresponding to more than 3.9 mio beds and 9.2 mio health-care workers. These are now displayed in the updated map of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands.
Finally, congratulations and great thanks to Ministries of Health of Austria and Algeria for signing the WHO statement pledging support to address health care-associated infection, in April and on 5 May respectively.
3.What’s new on 5 May 2013 Look at the WHO and 5 May 2013 web pages for updates and new documents! You will find:
·5 May 2013 featured on the WHO home page
·WHO News Release issued on 3 May 2013
·Updated map of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands registrations
·Updated map of countries/areas running hand hygiene campaigns
·New guidance document: Hand hygiene promotion in health care - Tips for patients
·New page and hand hygiene tools translated in Arabic. We thank very much the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office for support to finalize these tools.
·New page and hand hygiene tools translated in Chinese
·Spanish version of the WHO Guide on Hand Hygiene in Outpatient and Home-based Care and Long-term Care Facilities.We thank very much the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality of Spain for outstanding collaboration to develop this documentand translate it in Spanish.
·Videos by Sir Liam Donaldson,WHO Envoy for Patient Safety, and Professor Didier Pittet. These will highlight the focuses of 5 May this year and can be used for celebrations and events on and around 5 may.
In collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety at the University of Geneva Hospitals, we have recently conducted a survey on patient participation in health care facilities around the world. Among 260 facilities from 41 countries, patient participation is considered a useful strategy for improving hand hygiene and creating a positive patient safety climate in thefacilities implementing it.
In 2011, we also conducted a survey on the local production of the WHO-recommended alcohol-based formulation. Responses from 38 sites from 29 countries worldwide highlight advantages and potential barriers. In general, the results indicate that local production is feasible and provides a low-cost and excellently tolerated solution particularly suitable for low- and middle-income countries as an alternative to unavailable or unaffordablecommercially-produced ABHR.
To hear more about the results of these two surveys and also about new evidence in the field of hand hygiene and 5 May 2013 achievements, register now for the special presentation on 6 May, at 2.30 pm CET, in the context of the 2013 Free Teleclass Series on Infection Control. Professor Didier Pittet (lead advisor to the WHO Clean Care is Safer Care programme, Geneva,Switzerland) and Ms Margaret Murphy (lead advisor to the WHO Patients for Patient Safety programme, Cork, Ireland) will make a joint presentation entitled “Hand hygiene promotion universal spread: impact and patient participation”.
Professor Pittet will also deliver this presentation in French; this will be broadcast through Webber Training. See the date coming up soon and register!
Many other documents and news have been released since we started the promotion of 5 May 2013. See our previous Newsletters and the web pages dedicated to patient participation and hand hygiene monitoring and feedback.
4.Upcoming conferences
Interest in hand hygiene and infection control continues beyond 5 May 2013! The following upcoming conferences offer invaluable opportunities for updates and networking:
·Second International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control (ICPIC), Geneva, Switzerland, 25-28 June 2013
·40th Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC),Ft Lauderdale, USA, 8-10 June 2013
·53rd Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents Chemotherapy (ICAAC),Denver, USA, 10-13 September 2013
·13th International Congress of the International Federation of Infection Control (IFIC), Buenos Aires, Argentina,2-4 October 2013
Thank you for your outstanding support to WHOSAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands and your enthusiastic participation in 5 May 2013!
Stay tuned! Follow us on Twitter (@WHO) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/worldhealthorganization) and ask your peers to do the same!
Warm regards from the
WHO Patient Safety Programme: Clean Care is Safer Care.
Enquiries: savelives@who.int
WHO Clean Care is Safer Care
Providing WHO information has to be balanced with available resources, both human and financial. The WHO Patient Safety Programme, including the Clean Care is Safer Care team, do their best totranslate their most relevant tools and documents. Regretfully, we are not currently in a position to translate this SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands newsletter into French or Spanish. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and hope that you willremain a valued reader of the newsletter.
La délivrance d'informations provenant de l'OMS dépend des ressources disponibles, à la fois humaines et financières. Le Programme OMS pour la Sécurité des Patients, comprenant l'équipe"Un Soin Propre est un Soin plus sûr", fait de son mieux pour traduire ses outils et documents les plus importants. Malheureusement, nous ne sommes pas actuellement en mesure de traduire la lettre d'information mensuelle de SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands enfrançais et en espagnol. Nous nous excusons pour ce désagrément et espérons que vous resterez un fidèle lecteur de la lettre d'information à l'avenir.
La información generada por la OMS, depende de los recursos humanos y económicos disponibles. El Programa por la Seguridad del Paciente, y el equipo de la iniciativa "Cuidado Limpioes Cuidado Seguro", realizan sus mejores esfuerzos para traducir el material y documentos de mayor importancia. Desafortunadamente, por el momento no contamos con la facilidad de traducir el boletin mensual SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands en francés o español. Le pedimos disculpas por cualquier inconveniente que podamos causarle, y esperamos seguir contando con su valiosa participación como lector de nuestro boletin.
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