By Frederic Soumois.
The FPS Public Health wants to raise awareness of the contamination induced in the hospital. Hand disinfection is neglected more than once in four. But the respect save lives.
In 2005 n 2005, when the first survey of the national campaign for hand hygiene in the fight against nosocomial infections, in other words, those that we contract only because it is present (for otherwise) in a hospital, the gesture proper hand washing before and after any invasive procedure were raised by nursing staff in ... less than half the cases. And yet it is a statement made during observations certainly random, but in full view of health workers, doctors, nurses and other caregivers, who therefore knew they were being watched. Needless to say that compliance with these rules should drop significantly in the absence of any monitoring.
The consequences are serious, however. Although strict observance of hygiene measures can only act on a third of nosocomial infections due to harm, kill them in Belgium about three thousand people a year, more people than road accidents! A study by the Centre of Expertise Health Care estimated that 6% of all patients (100,000 people per year) contract a nosocomial infection, 13% of those infected by catching at least two.
The ICUs have the highest rates of infected patients: 1 in 4 adults and almost 13% of newborns. These are mainly pneumonia and sepsis.
"These infections may prolong the duration of stay, long term disability, financial expenditure and an increase in excessive costs to society," says Professor Anne Simon, a physician responsible for hospital hygiene University Clinics St-Luc, which has launched the fourth national campaign to promote hand hygiene in hospitals. "In every campaign, adherence to hand hygiene of a sudden climb, reaching about 75%, but then falls. We can say that awareness has the effect over time because each time we move to 5%, but clearly we are facing some sort of ceiling difficult to overcome, "said the specialist.
A call to order ... nice
So, this new campaign is for the first time, call the patient may itself challenge the medical staff on compliance with this measure ... or forgotten. "Obviously it's not turning the hospital room into a place of conflict. If there is "a call to order", it must be sympathetic and understanding for working caregivers, "insists Anne Simon, who acknowledges having met with some reservations about this development because of the professionalism of the teams.
In reality, the 30 seconds needed to wash their hands with an alcohol-based, single action that can protect against contamination of a patient, are not always so easy in finding services that are often overworked, where sometimes an emergency can forget this gesture. Moreover, the contamination does not come as caregivers: too few visitors of patients know they should take similar precautions if they come into contact with hospitalized relatives. Hospitals should, more often, report that all gel dispensers are not reserved to professionals.
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