Hand hygiene holds key to infection prevention
May 5 is celebrated every year as World Hand Hygiene Day (WHHD) to mobilise people around the world to increase adherence to hand hygiene in healthcare facilities.
Commemoration of the day is focused on health workers and how they can prevent the spread and contracting of diseases and infections, as they attend to the sick, to ensure their protection and that of patients from infections.
However, it is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of the need to pay particular attention to keeping our hands clean at all times, to keep the doctor away and ensure our families are safe at all times.
Studies have identified the hands as the easiest and most common medium for the transmission and spread of diseases worldwide, which means that if we become vigilant in keeping our hands clean at all times we will contend with less diseases and infections.
This year, the theme for the day is “It might be gloves. It's always hand hygiene”, pointing to the fact that gloves can never be a substitute for clean hands.
This year, the World Health Organisation campaign – Save Lives: Clean Your Hands – turns its focus on the appropriate use of gloves alongside hand hygiene.
The main goal of the WHHD campaign is to recognise that handwashing is one of the most effective actions one can take to reduce the spread of pathogens and prevent infections.
The campaign advocates that both health workers and community members play a role in preventing infections by practising regular and frequent handwashing.
It also makes a call to action to policy-makers to provide safe work environments for nurses and improve staffing levels.
Additionally, it calls on infection prevention and control leaders to empower nurses and midwives in providing safe care.
According to the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, as healthcare-associated infections remain a serious burden on patients and systems, hand hygiene remains the most effective method of preventing their spread.
The WHO also emphasises the urgent need for health facilities and governments to ensure hand hygiene compliance monitoring, and feedback is established as a national infection prevention and control indicator — at least in all reference hospitals by 2026.
It also calls for the promotion of the integration of WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) and waste management into health system planning which supports climate resilience and quality of care.
Governments have also been urged to raise awareness of the environmental impact of unnecessary glove use, which contributes to waste and resource strain.
A member of the National Infection Prevention and Control Committee of the Ministry of Health, Dr Serwah Amoah, has also advised the public to make hand hygiene a part of their daily lifestyle to break the cycle of transmission of infections and diseases in the country.
She explained to the Daily Graphic prior to World Hand Hygiene Day that though the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw many Ghanaians strictly adhere to hand hygiene principles, was no more, other diseases such as cholera and typhoid persisted, and it was the same hand hygiene principles that could break the cycle of their transmission.
Dr Amoah explained that most interactions involved the use of hands, while about 24 to 40 per cent of Ghanaians used their hands in eating, which was why it was important to ensure those interactions remained safe.
To ensure good health and long life we all owe it to ourselves to develop the habit of keeping our hands clean at all times and also teaching our children to do so.
We agree with Dr Amoah that there should be constant education and the need for metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies and heads of institutions to position hand hygiene facilities at vantage areas with all the needed items.
The handwashing protocol must also be enforced as was the case during the COVID-19 era, and individuals at public places tasked to ensure that hand hygiene facilities are always available and functional, especially at washrooms.
It is less expensive to prevent infections by ensuring we always have clean hands, and so we urge that we all become adherents to save us all, our families and the communities we live in from any epidemic or pandemic.
