A lot of focus is put on personal hygiene in infection prevention. However, one must not forget the importance of cleaning, disinfection and sterilization of surroundings and medical equipment in the health care sector.
Personal hygiene and cleaning goes hand in hand in infection prevention and research shows that effective infection prevention and control can reduce health care-associated infections (HAI) by at least 30% (source). Thus, effective infection prevention and control is the cornerstone for the delivery of safe, effective, high-quality health care.
The importance of cleaning guidelines
Imagine a large health care setting with thousands of people working and receiving care every day. These types of facilities are complex environments, where daily activities and interactions like treatments, operations and patient care in general leave surfaces and equipment contaminated with possible harmful and contagious microbes. If these surroundings are not cleaned properly with the right detergents and cleaning tools, they can easily become pathways for transmission of HAI’s (source).
Every year, HAIs cause unnecessary suffering and increase medical costs for millions of patients and their families around the world. These infections prolong hospital stays, increase the risk of post-operative complications and disabilities, increase resistance to antibiotics, and even result in unnecessary deaths.
Join the fight against HAIs. Contact your local distributor to learn more about how abena can help your institution
According to WHO, health care facilities must employ specific and routine-based hygiene and cleaning guidelines, also referred to as IPC (Infection Prevention & Control) in order to prevent the spread of HAI’s. Procedures of how, what and when to clean vary from one country and culture to another, but the IPC protocols help guide health care facilities promote awareness, educate staff and undertake preventive measures against as well as control and follow up on the level of HAI’s (source).
Know how to discard your waste
Besides focusing on cleaning of health care environments it is also important to be on top of your waste management procedures to ensure that waste is discarded in the right and most hygienic way. This minimizes the need for increased cleaning as well as undesirable spread of bacteria.
When it comes to infection prevention in health care it is important to note that body fluids, such as urine and feces, may hold bacteria that can cause infections. So it is important to treat and discard these types of fluids in a proper way. A quick, safe and hygienic solution to this issue could be to use a product like the Abri-Bag. Read more about Abri-bag and hygiene in toileting.
Good kitchen hygiene: The kitchen is a particularly important place to follow strict protocol. For health care professionals and caregivers, extra care and attention to hand hygiene and disinfection should be paid to avoid diseases such as listeria.
Practice proper hand hygiene especially after patient contact or use of the bathroom. Check out our guidelines for hand hygiene and find out why personal hygiene is essential in infection prevention [link to personal hygiene]
