Every year more than 30 million patients worldwide suffer from healthcare-associated sepsis. To prevent avoidable infections and improve patients’ safety, every year on the 5th of May, the World Health Organization calls upon healthcare facilities to sign up for its campaign SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands. This campaign encourages healthcare professionals to take concrete actions and use hand hygiene best practices. Three useful facts.
Staff shortages and poor organisation put a strain on nursing teams in the operating theatres of German clinics. However, many hospitals are already optimising their organisational processes and eliminating hygiene deficiencies.
Consistent hand hygiene reduces the monthly mortality rate in nursing homes, particularly during influenza peaks. The use of antibiotics also declines. These are the findings in a study published in the American Journal of Infection Control.
For hygienic hand disinfection, residual substances in alcoholic hand disinfectants are no longer recommended. This advisory has been in effect since the KRINKO guideline “Hand Hygiene in Health Care Facilities" was published in autumn 2016. The benefit of residual active ingredients for surgical hand disinfection was still unclear at the time of publication of the directive. A recent study has now closed this gap.
The number of infections caused by multi-resistant pathogens in hospitals is rising. That’s why researchers are intensely looking for new antibiotics that are effective against the resistant germs. 15-year-old-student Simon Meehan joined the search, and found an antibiotic agent in blackberry plants.
