HANDS UP FOR HAND HYGIENE

Top tips for a successful handwashing culture

On Saturday 5th May, the WHO (World Health Organization) is calling on health facilities to prevent health care-associated sepsis through hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) action. Good handwashing practice not only plays a key role in the prevention of sepsis in healthcare, but can also help fight the spread of antibiotic resistance. It is an easy, affordable and effective way to achieve continued health, wellbeing and productivity – in our homes, schools, work places and of course in our hospitals and health facilities. Put simply, good hand hygiene benefits everybody, everywhere.

The WHO’s ‘It’s in your Hands’ campaign calls to action this year are:

  • Health workers: “Take 5 Moments to clean your hands to prevent sepsis in health care.”
  • IPC leaders: “Be a champion in promoting hand hygiene to prevent sepsis in health care.”
  • Health facility leaders: “Prevent sepsis in health care, make hand hygiene a quality indicator in your hospital.”
  • Ministries of health: “Implement the 2017 WHA sepsis resolution. Make hand hygiene a national marker of health care quality.”
  • Patient advocacy groups: “Ask for 5 Moments of clean hands to prevent sepsis in health care.”

Here at Jangro, we take hand hygiene seriously and can help all types of facilities, including healthcare settings, implement good hand hygiene practices by providing advice, materials and a range of equipment and products. Top tips for a successful handwashing culture include:

  • Ensure handwashing facilities are accessible. The correct choice and positioning is crucial to influencing hand hygiene behaviour, particularly in busy healthcare settings where staff wash their hands repeatedly throughout their shift.
  • Dispensers must be readily available and easy to use, and dispense pleasant and mild products that are still effective at killing germs in fast contact times. Jangro offers a wide range of dispensing units, with choices such as manual and touch-free dispensers. Touch-free dispensers are becoming increasingly popular. Intuitively sensing the presence of hands, they dispense just the right amount of product every time, and the fact that they are touch-free also increases their hygiene rating.
  • As well as being gentle to the skin, soap formulations must be effective at killing germs. You can rest assured that all hand hygiene products supplied by Jangro conform to key standards including EN 1499, EN1276 and EN13727, and include skin-kind options such as our fragrance-free foam hand wash, and mild antimicrobial hand wash.

  • Eye-catching signage, posters and other visual displays can be very effective as a prompt, especially at key germ hot-spots such as waiting rooms – we must remember good hand hygiene should be practised by patients and visitors as well as healthcare staff. Jangro offers a range of free, downloadable wall charts and posters, including a guide to hand washing, which can be used as part of hand hygiene campaigns.

 

Details of Jangro’s latest washroom range, including dispensers, perfumed and unperfumed liquid soaps, foams, sanitising gels and wipes is available from the Jangro Cleaning & Hygiene Supplies Catalogue.

Find out more about the WHO Save Lives campaign on its website.

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