Malta is expected to sign up to an international campaign to improve hygiene standards and reduce infection in hospitals, according to an article in the Gulf Times.
The article said Malta will join the World Health Organisation Global Patient Safety Challenge this year, along with China, Mali, Spain, Sudan and Oman.
According to a spokesman at St Luke’s Hospital, “the Department of Health together with the hospitals is in the process of planning to take part in the WHO Patient Safety Challenge in which one component will be hospital hygiene. However, the Department of Health is not yet in a position to give further details.”
The UAE recently signed up to the international campaign launched last October, to improve hygiene standards and cut the spread of infection in hospitals.
Both government and private hospitals will be involved in the initiative, which will focus on things such as more frequent washing of hands by hospital staff.
Leader of the Global Patient Safety Challenge Professor Didier Pittit said: “Healthcare associated infections are waiting for people at the hospital door and there is no healthcare system in the world that can claim to have solved the problem.
“The challenge is not an option: it is a duty to patients, their families and healthcare workers.”
Infections that spread through hospitals cost tens of thousands of lives each year worldwide. In the United Kingdom alone they have been blamed for 5,000 deaths annually.
According to experts, the use of alcohol-based hand cleansers should be promoted as it is quicker than using soap and water and is useful for healthcare staff who have to wash their hands several times a day.
The Netherlands, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Bahrain and the United Kingdom are among the countries that have already joined the Global Patient Safety Challenge.
The key elements of the implementation strategy of the Global Patient Safety Challenge – Clean Care is Safer Care, include raising global awareness of the impact of healthcare-associated infections on patient safety and promoting preventive strategies.
It also invites health ministers from all World Health Organisation (WHO) member States to make a formal statement committing themselves to address healthcare-associated infection in their country.
According to the WHO report, over 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections acquired in hospital at any time.
Between five per cent and 10 per cent of patients admitted to modern hospitals in the developed world acquire one or more infections.
In the United States, one out of 136 hospital patients becomes seriously ill after acquiring an infection in hospital, which is equivalent to two million cases and about 80,000 deaths a year.
In England, more than 100,000 cases of healthcare-associated infection lead to over 5,000 deaths directly attributed to infection each year.
According to the WHO report, hand hygiene, a very simple action, “remains the primary measure for reducing healthcare-associated infection and the spread of anti-microbial resistance.”
Nurses and physicians usually clean their hands less than half of the number of times they should. In critical care situations where there are severe time constraints and the workload is higher, adherence to good practices might be as low as 10 per cent.