CAMPAIGN “SAVING LIVES IS IN YOUR HANDS”

May 5th: Global Hand Hygiene Day in Health Care

One more year the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality (MSPSI) joins the Global Hand Hygiene Day held on May 5th sponsored by the WHO

One more year, under the motto “Saving lives is in your hands”, the MSPSI joins the Global Hand Hygiene Day held on May 5th that has been sponsored by the WHO since 2009. The message of the campaign is SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands , a message intended to promote, worldwide, hand hygiene at the patient’s point of care. The objective of this action is to encourage countries and healthcare institutions to support this initiative by planning their own activities, creating messages that remind health care professionals and citizens of the importance of hand hygiene.

Since Spain officially joined in 2006 the WHO challenge Clean care is safer care , the Quality Agency of the MSPSI has been financing specific action lines for the Health Regions to promote hand hygiene in the health care facilities. In addition, the Coordinating Team of the NHS Hand Hygiene Program (created in 2008 and integrated by technical representatives from all the Health Regions) agrees on the basic actions to be developed at the health care facilities and the indicators for evaluation. According to the last data from 2009: more than 70% of the hospitals evaluated in 16 Health Regions have implemented training actions on hand hygiene for hospital personnel; more than 50% of all hospitals beds are equipped with alcohol-based hand rubs; more than 80% of Intensive Care Unit beds are equipped with these products at the patient’s point of care; and at least 40%of these hospitals have evaluated the adherence of its personnel to HH by direct observation.

In Europe, Spain- with 456 health care facilities that have joined the WHO’s campaign - occupies the third place in the rating.

Actions developed by the MSPSI in support of the Global Hand Hygiene Day of May 5th 2011

The actions of this campaign have been previously agreed with the Heath Regions by the coordinating team of the NHS Hand Hygiene Program. The following are the most innovative aspects of the current campaign:

1. Organizing a Call for Ideas (a proposal put forward by the coordinating team of the NHS Hand Hygiene Program) encompassing all the Health Regions to promote HH during and around the Global HH Day. Each Health Region selected 3 proposals from the ideas submitted and sent them to the coordinating team for the final evaluation stage. The winning ideas will be posted on May 5 in the Patient Safety Strategy (PSS) website. The 6 best projects will be awarded with devices representing the logos of the HH Campaign during the VI Conference on Patient Safety to be held on October 2011. In addition, all the ideas submitted will be disseminated through the website to make them available to health care providers and facilities.
2. Including patients and citizens in efforts to promote hand hygiene through specific training actions given by the Citizen Network of Patient Safety Trainers (Red Ciudadana de Formadores en SP). In this sense we have been working with the Citizen Network of Patient Safety Trainers to create a people’s declaration in favor of hand hygiene. This declaration is attached at the end of this document.
3. Producing informational materials: leaflets, posters, stickers, and bookmarks. These materials have been distributed throughout all the health regions and have also been sent to the Citizen Network of Patient Safety Trainers and to all the patients and consumers associations that signed, in 2007, the Patient Declaration and Commitment Statement to Patient Safety.
4. The coordinating team of the NHS Hand Hygiene Program has created a letter template for the health regions . They will forward it to health care professionals inviting them to participate in the activities organized for May 5thand to manifest their commitment to HCAI prevention through adequate HH.
5. Informational posters and tables displaying all the materials prepared for the campaign will be placed in the entrance hall of the MSPSI building.

Patients declaration for hand hygiene

The Citizens Network of Patient Safety Trainers is an initiative promoted and financed by the Quality Agency of thel Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality . It is intended as a tool to encourage the active participation of both patients and the public in Patient Safety policies and thus promote a safer healthcare for all.

In the last year, the Citizens Network has provided training for trainers in Hand Hygiene to more than 160 patients from the various Health Regions.

The Citizens Network of Patient Safety Trainers is celebrating today, May 5th, the Global Hand Hygiene Day by publishing the “Patients and citizens for hand hygiene: Hand hygiene as a necessary action”, their first National Declaration in support of a basic public health behavior, both in the health care area as in the household arena.

The document states that appropriate hand hygiene is “the most important, safe, simple, cheap and efficacious procedure for preventing and controlling healthcare associated infections (HCAI)”. And remarks that: “lack of hand hygiene amongst the health care providers/workers is the most common vehicle of transmission for these types of infections that are acquired in hospital and health care center environments”. In countries of our area HCAI affect “between 5 and 10% of patients admitted to hospitals with acute conditions, causing an increase of hospital stay time, and therefore of health care costs, while endangering patient safety”.

Patients for hand hygiene: Handwashing as a necessary action

Patients and citizens for hand hygiene: Hand hygiene as a necessary action

We, the patients and citizens that make up the National Health System, hereby state knowing that maintaining hand hygiene is the most important, safe, simple, cheap and efficacious procedure for preventing and controlling healthcare associated infections(HCAI).

Lack of hand hygiene amongst the health care providers/workers is the most common vehicle of transmission for these types of infections that are acquired in hospital and health care center environments. In countries within our area HCAI affect between 5 and 10% of patients admitted with acute conditions, causing an increase of hospital stay and of health care costs while endangering patient safety.

For this reason, we ask that hand hygiene becomes a routine practice amongst the healthcare personnel that cares for us or treats us.

We require that health care givers perform hand hygiene:

• Before touching a patient.
• Before performing a clean or aseptic procedure.
• After body fluid exposure risk.
• After touching a patient
• After touching patient sorroundings.

We require that health care institutions and health care policies actively promote these measures and provide the required training and awareness-raising among health care providers. We also require that the resources needed to implement them are guaranteed.

We, on the other hand, make a commitment to cooperate in the implementation of appropriate hand hygiene practices and to disseminate its importance to achieve safer health assistance and better quality of health care.

Madrid, May 5th 2011

Global Hand Hygiene Day