By Boaz Sikobe
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 11 – You arrive at the hospital with your child who has a respiratory disease and are informed that he or she requires admission. The hospital informs you that your stay will last 3 to 5 days.
On the second day, your baby improves and notices the lovely hospital environment, wanting to interact with the play area and becoming friendly to every surface of the hospital.
Your visitors do not let you down, and they visit whenever the opportunity arises. They make direct contact with your child.
On day 4, just as you’re hoping for good news about discharge, your child develops diarrhea, and the doctor decides to test the stool, only to discover that your child has Rotavirus, a diarrheal disease.
You are informed that this is a viral feco-oral (feces to the mouth) disease that is spread through contaminated hands and interaction with potentially contaminated hospital surfaces.
Your child will most likely spend another 3 to 5 days in the hospital for treatment. When you start looking back, you realize how many times you ignored or forgot to wash your hands, as well as the number of visitors who came to see your baby and did not wash their hands.
You now notice health education posters and materials adorning the hospital’s walls, reminding you to practice hand hygiene and to request that healthcare workers wash their hands before attending to you and your child.
You recall receiving health education about hand hygiene on the first day of your admission, but you were distracted by your sick child and were unable to absorb the information. The result is your child contracting a hospital-acquired infection.
Sadly, this is the story of many hospital users. A study done in three hospitals in Kenya between 2010 and 2012 revealed that 4.9 percent of children admitted in hospitals end up with hospital acquired infections.
From the story above, these infections lead to prolonged hospital stay, increased expenditure and in some serious cases, it may lead to death.
For bacterial infection, one may need to use antibiotics which in turn contributes to the burden of increased antibiotic resistance.
The good news is that one of the most effective ways to protect patient safety is also one of the simplest and least expensive: hand hygiene.
Hand hygiene is widely acknowledged to be the single most effective method of reducing hospital acquired infections. Hand hygiene can prevent up to 50 percent of preventable infections.
Every year on May 5th, the world observes Global Hand Hygiene Day, and this is an opportunity to remember to wash your hands for your own and your loved ones’ safety.
In hospital set ups, there are many moments when your visitors and healthcare workers are advised to wash their hands.
Bed rails, bedside tables, door knobs, toilet handles, electricity switches, remote controls, and other hospital surfaces are the most contaminated.
It is reasonable to assume that all hospital surfaces are potentially contaminated. As a patient or visitor, you must remember to wash your hands after touching these surfaces.
One of the most important lessons from COVID-19 was that hands should be washed after blowing the nose and before touching the face.
It is critical to be vigilant and inquire whether the healthcare worker attending to you or your child has washed their hands before assisting you.
All of these precautions help to keep harmful germs at bay and protect your baby from hospital-acquired infections and antibiotic resistance.
Hands must be washed with soap and water or hand sanitizers containing alcohol. Rub your hands for 20 to 30 seconds with soap and water or an alcohol-based sanitizer to ensure germ-free hands.
However, the fingertips and between fingers, including the thumb, must be emphasized. It is important to note that if hands are visibly dirty, washing with soap and water to physically remove the dirt should be considered rather than rubbing with alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Sanitizer should only be used on hands that are not visibly dirty for decontamination purposes. Keep your hands clean and keep away diseases.
Sikobe is the Infection Control Coordinator at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital
