First Global Patient Safety Challenge Clean Care is Safer Care
The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to impro...ve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants.
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2nd edition
WASH FIT is a risk-based, continuous improvement framework with a set of tools for undertaking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) improvements as part of wider quality improvements in health care facilities. It is aimed at small primary, and in some instances secondary, health care fa...cilities in low and middle income countries.
An app, for front line data collection is also available in the Android Google Play store or as a web app
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Investment in all the drivers and facilitators of hand hygiene action in health care to ensure that it occurs at the point of care and other critical moments requires a multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach. WHO describes such an approach as a “multimodal improvement strategy” (MMIS) which is... at the core of its implementation models for hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes. The focus of this document is on the resource considerations for investing in hand hygiene improvement in health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) using the MMIS approach.
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- A Skills Building Program for Clinicians and Non-Clinicians. Adherence guidelines- slide deck- training course for health providers
Panam Salud Publica. 2021;45:e22. https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2021.22
Resumen ejecutivo guía de práctica clínica manejo de la infección por Sars-CoV 2
The report identifies major global gaps in WASH services: one third of health care facilities do not have what is needed to clean hands where care is provided; one in four facilities have no water services, and 10% have no sanitation services. This means that 1.8 billion people use facilities that l...ack basic water services and 800 million use facilities with no toilets. Across the world’s 47 least-developed countries, the problem is even greater: half of health care facilities lack basic water services. Furthermore, the extent of the problem remains hidden because major gaps in data persist, especially on environmental cleaning.
This report also describes the global and national responses to the 2019 World Health Assembly resolution on WASH in health care facilities. More than 70% of countries have conducted related situation analyses, 86% have updated and are implementing standards and 60% are working to incrementally improve infrastructure and operation and maintenance of WASH services. Case studies from 30 countries demonstrate that progress is being propelled by strong national leadership and coordination, use of data to direct resources and action, and the mutual benefits of empowering health workers and communities to develop solutions together.
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WHO's Health in the Green Economy sector briefings examine the health impacts of climate change mitigation strategies considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their Fourth Assessment Report.
5 May 2021
This Information Note is intended to assist national TB programmes and health personnel worldwide to maintain essential tuberculosis (TB) services during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the recovery phase. It is important that recent progress made in TB prevention and care is not reversed b...y COVID-19. The WHO Global TB Programme, along with WHO regional and country offices, developed this note in response to questions received from Member States and other partners since the start of the pandemic. The note includes references to other published WHO information products relevant to TB practitioners. WHO continues to monitor the situation closely for any changes that may influence this note and will issue updates should any factors change.
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The Government of Kenya, through the Ministry of Health, has the
constitutional obligation to provide the highest level of health care for its
citizens. The Ministry of Health’s review of the 2015 Policy document
on infection prevention and control (IPC) is in line with that goal.
Community health worker teams are potential game-changers in ensuring access to care in vulnerable communities. Who are they? What do they actually do? Can they help South Africa realize universal health coverage? As the proactive arm of the health services, community health workers teams provide ho...usehold and community education, early screening, tracing and referrals for a range of health and social services. There is little local or global evidence on the household services provided by such teams, beyond specific disease-oriented activities such as for HIV and TB. This paper seeks to address this gap.
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This document provides an overview of specific health care waste technologies for the treatment of solid infectious and sharp waste. For each technology, details of its operation, effects on the environment and health, requirements for installation, capacities for treating waste, examples of consuma...bles and advantages and disadvantages are described. The document is designed for health care facility administrators and planners, WASH and infection prevention control staff, national planners, donors and partners.
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Patients with suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can infect others at any time, including during transfer and transport. COVID-19 is a new infectious disease that requires contact and droplet precautions; lapses in infection prevention and control (IPC) can easily happen at vulnerable mom...ents such as during transfer. This guide aims to identify key steps to prepare the community and health system response to ensure IPC is maintained during transfer and transport. This guide is intended for personnel involved in coordinating and performing transfer and transport of patients with suspected COVID-19 requiring hospital care.
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This checklist has been developed to support hospital preparedness for the management of COVID-19 patients.
Elements to be assessed have been divided into the following areas:
Establishment of a core team and key internal and external contact points
Human, material and facility capacit...y
Communication and data protection
Hand hygiene, personal protective equipment (PPE), and waste management
Triage, first contact and prioritisation
Patient placement, moving of the patients in the facility, and visitor access
Environmental cleaning
For each area mentioned above, the elements or processes were identified and the items to be checked are listed below.
A procedure for the self-auditing of compliance with this checklist should be considered.
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28 Dec 2020. The main objective of these guidelines is to provide tools for staff working in the field of immunization to support effective communication between health personnel and the general population, with the aim of strengthening, maintaining or recovering trust in vaccines and the immunizati...on programs in the Region of the Americas.
Available in English, Spanish and Portuguese
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This analytical report reviews and discusses the potential role and influence of political commitment in implementing endorsements and conducting policy in the field of tuberculosis (TB) prevention and care. It promotes discussion by comparing and analysing the extent to which selected international... commitments, set out in declarations and other committal documents between 2000 and 2018, may have translated into sustainable action. This reflection is relevant and timely, as the United Nations high-level meeting (UNHLM) on TB recently took place, offering countries the opportunity to take stock of progress made, refocus efforts, and step up global commitments to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating TB by 2030
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In 2017, 3.6 million of the estimated 10 million people with TB worldwide were “missed” by national TB programmes (NTPs). Two thirds of them are thought to access TB treatment of questionable quality from public and private providers who are not engaged by the NTP. The quality of care provided i...n these settings is often not known or substandard. Closing these gaps and ensuring patient-centred care imply that quality-assured and affordable TB services must be made available wherever people choose to seek care.
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Supplement Article
J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr Volume 78, Supplement 1, August 15, 2018 www.jaids.com
Assessment of the quality of institutional care for adults with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities in the WHO European Region.
The specific objectives of the project were to address gaps in knowledge about the number and characteristics of such long-term institutions and to identify deficie...ncies in current care standards through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This publication examines and rates the quality of care and protection of human rights in selected institutions in over 20 countries in the Region using the WHO QualityRights toolkit. It identifies steps to take to continue progress toward deinstitutionalization and to ensure respect for the rights of people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.
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