Tribune News Network
Doha
On the occasion of World Hand Hygiene Day 2023, the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) engaged in the 12th hand hygiene campaign in line with the international community’s activities.
The campaign targets all primary health care staff and the society in general by offering awareness lectures that stress the importance of hand hygiene and proper hand hygiene. This theme for World Hand Hygiene Day, which is celebrated on May 5 every year, this year was “Accelerate Action Together. Save Lives – Clean Your Hands”. The event was held on May 7th, 2023. PHCC’s Communicable Diseases and Infection Prevention Department said that the engagement in the World Hand Hygiene Day aims to improve and consolidate hand hygiene practices and motivate the community and staff in health care centres to reduce the rate of health-care–associated infections, noting that this is everyone’s responsibility.
The campaign also aims to educate staff and patients in health centres to prevent the spread of microbes, especially during COVID-19 pandemic, as many diseases are transmitted through direct contact with others, the surrounding environment, offices, beds, etc. For that reason, lack of hand hygiene is behind the spread of many types of bacteria and diseases, such as COVID-19 virus, seasonal influenza, diarrhoea, etc.
Dr. Hamad Al Mudahka, executive director of PHCC’s Preventive Health Directorate, said that PHCC is working to avoid various risks that may occur in health centres, including preventing the transmission of microbes, as hands play a major role in the transmission of infectious diseases, as seen especially during COVID-19 pandemic. This is through making sure to provide alcohol-based hand sanitisers, raise awareness of performing hand hygiene using soap and water, and hold events that help consolidate awareness hand hygiene concepts among health centre visitors, in addition to complying with other public health measures, such as wearing face masks and following social distancing. Further, PHCC held awareness lectures for both staff and patients in health centres and distributed leaflets and a questionnaire to gather opinions of staff and patients on hand hygiene. In addition to the awareness messages delivered to health centres’ staff and visitors through SMS and social media platforms in both Arabic and English.
Dr. Khalid Al Awad, director of health protection at the preventive health at PHCC, said that the lesson learned from COVID-19 pandemic is the adherence to infection control basics through three main means that come ahead of vaccination, which are adherence to hand hygiene, wearing face masks, and practicing social distancing.
