Blog, Care homes, Medical and healthcare
World Hand Hygiene Day is on May 5th
Apr
It emphasises the importance of effective hand hygiene in healthcare facilities
Global hand hygiene support becomes the centre of attention with the onset of World Hand Hygiene Day, which takes place on Monday, May 5th, which in the UK is of course a bank holiday.
With the self-stated aim of “maintaining a global profile on the importance of hand hygiene in health care”, it is an important event in the battle to improve improved health for everyone around the globe.
The SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands initiative is coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) which “leads and champions global efforts to achieve better health for all”.
The event, targeted globally, has the intended aim of inspiring the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC). This includes the roll out of high quality and affordable healthcare, helping the population at large achieve a higher level of wellbeing, and to access affordable, safe and high quality medication says the campaign website. The initiative very much targets the healthcare sector, including hospitals and care homes – and in particular, those working in it.
“The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health-care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way.”
The annual event was first rolled out in 2009, being described as a “natural extension” of the WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge: Clean Care is Safer Care work.
Hand hygiene improvement tools
The efforts of healthcare workers to improve levels of effective hand hygiene are aided by the provision of a “suite of hand hygiene improvement tools and materials”, intended to “help the translation into practice of a multimodal strategy for improving and sustaining hand hygiene in health care.”
“WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands annual initiative is part of a major global effort led by the WHO to support health-care workers to improve hand hygiene in health care and thus support the prevention of often life threatening HAI.”
Hand washing at the point of need in all medical facilities
Teal’s range of mobile handwash stations for medical facilities are available to purchase and are essential during norovirus or C. difficile outbreaks – or when scheduled maintenance work takes other hand washing facilities out of use temporarily.
The NHS advises“Use liquid soap and warm water to wash all surfaces of the hands, rinse under running water and dry thoroughly. Alcohol hand gel is not effective against norovirus.”
Mobile hand wash stations can also be hired »
There are vehicle mounted, wall mounted, mains powered and free standing hand wash stations as well as mobile sinks for use with pre-heated hot water.
The Teal range of mobile sinks includes the MediWash, Hygienius and Hygienius ProWash, BigSynk, Super Stallette, TEALwash, Handeman Xtra, Compact Classic, HandSpa, CliniWash the Compact Welfare and the WashStand Xtra.