Saudi Health Ministry using social media to push hygiene slogan 

(MENAFN - Arab News) The Ministry of Health is using social media such as Facebook and Twitter this week to promote the global annual "Clean Your Hands" campaign that kicked off in the Kingdom on Saturday.

An official from the ministry's health education department told Arab News yesterday that his department is handling the campaign throughout the Kingdom. Extensive arrangements have been made by the department to hold a scientific session today for medics and paramedics on the significance of the day.

In addition to these programs, the MOH has been conveying health messages through its mobile health education units in all parts of the Kingdom, he added.

The MOH has demarcated 20 health regions in the Kingdom each headed by a regional director of health services, who will supervise such programs in their respective areas.

"Most health care associated infections are preventable through good hand hygiene - cleaning hands at the right times and in the right way," the official said.

He added that cleaning hands properly prevents a number of diseases including hepatitis-A, diarrhea and diseases caused by intestinal parasites. It protects against bacteria that cause infections in health facilities.

He pointed out that hand hygiene is the most effective way for the prevention of infections in hospitals and there are several chances to clean hands before and after any medical professionals comes into contact with a patient.

The goal of the campaign is to ensure that infection control is acknowledged universally as a solid and essential basis of patient safety and supports the reduction of health care-associated infections and their consequences.

As a global campaign to improve hand hygiene among health care workers, the Clean Your Hands campaign is a major component of the larger "Clean Care is Safer Care" initiative. It advocates the need to improve and sustain hand hygiene practices of health care workers at the right times and in the right way to help reduce the spread of potentially life-threatening infections in health care facilities, he said.

According to MOH Director General of the Department of Combating Infection Dr. Abdullah Al-Asiri, his department carried out 12 training courses for 260 health workers and eight workshops in collaboration with the World Health Organization on various factors that affect the general health of people.

Earlier in a press briefing, the director general explained the observance of this day would include a number of scientific meetings to educate employees. There would be programs to honor community members who had rendered outstanding services in health facilities in the area of hand hygiene, he added.

He pointed out there are several places in the human body that remain vulnerable to bacterial infections, especially the palm, nails and fingers, adding hand washing could solve these basic problems. There are also millions of bacteria living on human skin that does not harm people in natural conditions, he noted.

According to WHO, each year hundreds of millions of patients around the world are affected by health care associated infections (HCAIs).

Although HCAIs are the most frequent adverse events in health care, its true global burden remains unknown because of the difficulty in gathering reliable data.

Understanding and assessing the global burden of HCAI is one of the key areas of work of the WHO's Clean Care is Safer Care program.

The WHO Guidelines on hand hygiene in health care support hand hygiene promotion and improvement in health-care facilities worldwide and are complemented by the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy, the guide to implementation, and implementation toolkit that contains many ready-to-use practical tools. These tools have been field-tested and have yielded new, interesting data on hand hygiene practices and success factors for improvement.