Infection prevention and control

Hand Hygiene for ALL Initiative

The WHO and UNICEF-led Hand Hygiene for All Initiative aims at ensuring implementation of WHO’s global recommendations on hand hygiene to prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic, and hand hygiene improvement sustainability in countries as a mainstay of wider infection prevention and control (IPC) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) efforts.

But how can hand hygiene implementation be successful? By implementing strategies and approaches proven through the successes of the WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign and fostering integration between hand hygiene and WASH improvements. This brief draws on learning from legacy work and the current evidence base and summarizes how joint action and collaboration are essential for successful strategies, in the context of the COVID-19 response and beyond.

• Download the brief document here
• WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands 5 May 2020

WHO's global annual call to action for health workers.

Nurses and Midwives, clean care is in your hands!

Clean care, including hand hygiene best practices, and the central role played by nurses and midwives in achieving this, is the focus of this year’s 5 May campaign. The idea has been to partner with the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife that WHO has declared for 2020, and to recognize their crucial contribution to strengthening quality health systems.

• Read more about 5 May 2020 here
• Nurses and midwives are critical to teaching hand hygiene in Pakistan

Minimum Requirements for infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes

The minimum requirements represent the starting point for undertaking the journey to build strong and effective IPC programmes at the national and facility level. They should be in place for all countries and health care facilities to support further progress towards full implementation of all recommendations on the WHO core components of IPC programmes.

• Download the Minimum Requirements for IPC manual here

IPC core components

Effective infection prevention and control (IPC) is the cornerstone for the delivery of safe, effective, high-quality health care. WHO's IPC Global Unit developed recommendations identifying the core components of effective IPC programmes, to help countries and health care facilities develop action plans to prevent current and future threats. These threats, like antibiotic resistance germs, the Ebola outbreak, and weak health systems, can be directly addressed through implementation of the 8 core components of IPC outlined by WHO.

• Guidelines on core components of infection prevention and control programmes at the national and acute health care facility level

• What are the core components for effective infection prevention and control?
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Critical role of infection prevention and control

No one should catch an infection while receiving health care, yet, hundreds of millions of people are affected every year; this is avoidable. And this alarming figure affects those providing health care too. Infection prevention and control (IPC) is a practical, evidence-based approach which prevents patients and health workers from being harmed and ensures quality health care. It involves practising WHO hand hygiene recommendations, having a clean and hygienic environment, monitoring infections and having action plans to reduce their frequency, never re-using needles and syringes, using antibiotics but only when truly needed, to reduce the risk of resistance. A large proportion of infections are caused by antibiotic resistant organisms; there is global consensus that urgent action is needed.

• Find out more about infection prevention and control

Surgical site infections

Surgical site infections (SSIs) occur following surgery, in the part of the body where the surgery took place, and are the most common type of health care-associated infection. The bacteria which cause SSIs can be resistant to commonly-used antibiotics and therefore threaten the lives of millions of patients every year. Ensuring that a range of preventive measures are in place will help stop the spread of germs, antibiotic resistance and reduce SSIs. The key measures include; appropriate skin disinfection before incision, ensuring that all surgical equipment is sterile, maintaining asepsis in the operating room, appropriate and timely antibiotic prophylaxis and the right surgical hand scrub.

• Global WHO Guidelines for the Prevention of Surgical Site Infections

Injection safety

Injections are among the most common health care procedures. Every year at least 16 billion injections are administered worldwide with approximately 90% given in curative care. But in some countries, up to 70% of the injections given are unnecessary and are furthermore administered in an unsafe way, by reusing syringes and needles. This causes the transmission of bloodborne viruses. The WHO injection safety campaign called Get the point – Make smart injection choices, aims to make injection practices safer for patients, health workers and the community.

• Read more about injection safety