News

BODE up-to-date

“Aktion Saubere Hände” under way

In Germany, the Coalition for Patient Safety, the German Society for Quality Management in Healthcare and the National Reference Centre for the Surveillance of Nosocomial Infections launched the initiative called “Aktion Saubere Hände” (Clean Hands Campaign). The campaign’s target is to significantly and lastingly enhance compliance with hand disinfection in German hospitals.

According to the 2007 report of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) approx. three million hospital-acquired infections occur in hospitals throughout Europe per year. These infections result in additional stress for the patients and extend their hospital stay. Furthermore, they produce considerable extra costs through increased organisational efforts and employment of staff. Experts are of the opinion that accurate hand disinfection is the most important measure to prevent the transmission of pathogens.

Numerous studies show that improved hand disinfection practices can reduce the incidence of nosocomial infection. Hence, the WHO made the promotion of effective measures to improve hand hygiene to one of the five key targets in enhancing patient safety in its current, worldwide “Clean care is safer care” campaign. This WHO campaign has already been successfully implemented on national level, for example in France and Belgium. In France, the rate of nosocomial infection decreased by 1.2 percent on average, the number of infections transmitted by blood even by 25 percent. Belgium could increase the compliance by 20 percent to a total of 69 percent and even improved this result with a 2nd campaign to remarkable 70.1 percent.

Now Germany decided to also follow the requirements in terms of the WHO campaign. “Aktion Saubere Hände”, which is promoted by the Ministry of Health, shall support hospitals in increasing compliance rates.

The German initiators state that “they want to effectuate a change in culture enhancing the importance of hand disinfection.” There shall be various activities at different levels such as hospital management, quality assurance, personnel and patient.

 

As of now, everyone who is interested can directly access the website of “Aktion Saubere Hände” in German language by clicking the logo.

Status: April 2008