BETTER HAND HYGIENE COULD CUT MOUNTING TOLL OF HEALTH CARE-
LINKED INFECTIONS UN
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New York, Mar 5 2007 3:00PM
With some 1.4 million people suffering from health care-
associated infections at any given time, United Nations health
officials are urging countries to join a global effort to
improve hand hygiene and related practices in hospitals and care
facilities to help reduce the growing number of deaths and
illnesses.
There are effective strategies to improve hand hygiene and
other basic practices that, if implemented by PAHO/WHO member
countries, will save lives and reduce the largely preventable
burden of health care-associated infections.
http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/pr070305.htm
The workshop Clean Care is Safer Care - was convened to
develop a strategy for reducing health care-associated
infections, also called nosocomial infections, through better
hand hygiene and other improvements in infection-control
practices, clinical procedures and surveillance. Most research
on such infections has been carried out in developed countries,
and less is known about the problem in the developing world. But
data from Mexico indicate some 450,000 cases of health care-
associated infection annually, causing 32 deaths per 100,000.
Medical schools may not teach enough about it, but it is also a
problem of health care systems. Overloaded doctors and nurses
have to deal with too many patients at once and dont have time
to wash their hands. The solution can be as simple as always
having alcohol hand rub at the point of care.