Dear colleagues,
Firstly, please allow me to wish you all a peaceful 2015, full of energy and good health, to dedicate time to both yourselves and your loved ones, and also to progress in your work with great satisfaction. Furthermore, I hope that 2015 brings us more wonderful opportunities for collaboration in the field of hand hygiene improvement and infection prevention and control (IPC). You will shortly receive the first Save Lives Newsletter of 2015, in preparation of 5 May 2015.
As you are probably aware, the response to the multi-country Ebola outbreak is still continuing.
In an effort to stop the spread of the disease and treat infected patients, the WHO Department of Service Delivery and Safety is continuing to provide leadership on IPC in the ongoing response. We have also been asked to lead on essential services and health system recovery in the affected West African countries. To deliver on this commitment, our IPC team is currently working closely with countries on specific and focused IPC projects and some team members, including myself, are undertaking frequent missions to the countries concerned. My experience so far has been exciting and very positive, with many lessons learned and outstanding collaborations with national colleagues and partners.
As trusted members of our Save Lives: Clean Your Hands network, we are reaching out to you once again, to seek your practical support with this public health emergency in West Africa. There is still a strong and immediate need for IPC specialists to be deployed in the affected countries in the next six months. We are currently recruiting English- or French-speaking IPC qualified medical and nursing staff who could assist on the ground for a period ranging from 6 weeks to a maximum of 6 months. We would be offering offer WHO Consultant contracts for these deployments.
The work will mainly take place at national or district level, in collaboration with our IPC team and country offices. It will be focused on the following objectives, in collaboration with the ministries of health and partners (e.g. CDC, DFID, etc):
• To assess IPC and quality of care standards in Ebola facilities;
• To implement immediate improvement actions based on the results of assessments to improve IPC, triage and quality of care in facilities caring for Ebola patients;
• To improve implementation of IPC standards for triage posts and isolation in non-Ebola health-care facilities;
• To improve IPC knowledge and increase availability of IPC expertise to support a safe and rapid recovery of the affected health systems.
We believe that you or your colleagues may be able to support this effort or might know of someone who would be qualified.
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