WORLD HYGIENE DAY 2023
THEME: Accelerate Action Together. SAVE LIVES – Clean Your Hands
We are celebrating World Hand Hygiene Day on May 5 to maintain a global profile on the importance of hand hygiene in healthcare and bringing people together to support hand hygiene improvement worldwide.
There are several deadly, and dangerous diseases caused by microorganisms all around us. They are all trying to get inside us, which could easily happen through our hands. Hand hygiene is the best defense against such microbial attacks.
Lethal diseases have always plagued our world. Some scientists believe microbes could have caused one of the major mass extinction events. We countermeasure one, and suddenly another shows up. This has been going on since the beginning of our society. Bacteria and viruses danced over our corpses for a long time until we discovered hand washing.
Many religious and cultural activities include hand washing. But we never made the connection between hand washing and disease spreading until 1846. Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who noted the link between hand hygiene and disease spread. He noted that the women giving birth in his hospital’s maternity ward were more likely to die of fever compared to the adjacent ward. Midwives ran the adjacent maternity ward. Semmelweis found that the doctors visiting the maternity ward were often performing autopsies and probably carried cadaverous particles on their hands. Midwives did not conduct autopsies and had cleaner hands. When Semmelweis implemented hand washing with chlorine, the death toll drastically decreased. However, sadly, this method did not become popular in the medical community.
Hand hygiene saves millions of lives every year when performed at the right moments during health care delivery. It is also a smart investment that offers an exceptional return for each dollar invested. Clean care is a sign of respect for those who seek care, and it protects the health of other workers who provide that care.
Now is a critical time when countries across the world need to speed up implementing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and increase investments to close gaps in infection prevention and control (IPC), including hand hygiene. Indeed, many countries are showing strong engagement and advancements in scaling up those actions, but overall, progress is slow and gains are at risk.
Together, we can galvanize action to prevent infections and antimicrobial resistance in health care.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY INTERVENTION STRATEGY (s)
OTs’ professional services are needed when there is a need to assist with hygiene therapy, which helps an individual or persons to be independent, not dependent on the help of others, so that they can perform ADL (activities of daily living) such as eating, dressing, grooming, and toileting independently while being hygienic.
Occupational Therapists also help with environmental modification and detoxification to prevent or contain the spread of infectious diseases.
OTs adhere to the Standards for Infection Prevention and Control and are acquainted with all legislation, standards, and policies applicable to their area of practice and practice setting.
Kindly visit us at www.enabilityot.com for more information.