Commentary - (2020) Volume 6, Issue 3
Department of Infectious Diseases and Allergy, Luigi Sacco Hospital, Milan, Italy
Received Date: July 22, 2020; Accepted Date: July 24, 2020; Published Date: July 31, 2020
Citation: Rizzardini G (2020) Prevention Protocols and Control Measures for Infection Spread in Hospitals. J Prev Infect Cntrol Vol.6 No.3:8. doi:10.21767/2471-9668.100045
Copyright: © 2020 Rizzardini G. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
In day to day life, it is common that humans are prone to several infections caused by bacteria and virus. Preventive measures and control strategies are important to mitigate infections before they get worse.
Infections are mainly observed in patients admitted in hospitals due to unhygienic maintenance inside and surroundings of hospitals. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) observed from surveys that one in every 20 hospitalized patients will suffer from infection. Hospitals should implement and follow effective strategies to prevent .These can be from simple hand wash to well-planned team-oriented safety programs. The simplest preventive method would be maintaining hand hygiene. Washing hands thoroughly and wearing sterile gloves before any procedure is performed is important for any hospital personnel. Hospital equipment should be cleaned and disinfected before use on admitted or out patients. Patient wards should be cleanly maintained because Infections commonly happen from surrounding environment. Some bacteria or virus even survive on surfaces for months and transmit infection when any patients or health care providers touches the surface. Environmental hygiene experts should be hired too suggest preventive protocols and infection control measures.
There should be surveillance on housekeeping tasks. Patients who are already infected or suffering from a disease should be tested in prior and should be moved to a separate ward where patients with similar infection are there to avoid cross infections. Hospital management should make sure all staff is adhering to specific safety protocols. Hospital staff should be vaccinated for recommended deadly infections as they come into contact daily with patients suffering from different ailments or diseases. Healthcare organization should have a strict surveillance on safety protocols being followed or not in the premises. They should collect data on infection patterns and should regularly make assessments to predict possible infections for the promotion patient safety. Antibiotic selection and dosing should be appropriate for use on patients to avoid adverse events to happen. If antibiotics are misused or overused on patients, patient may become resistant to infection and its spread cannot be controlled.
There is should a sheer coordination among staff who participate in surgery. The pre and post-operative planning and surgical preparations are important before going on to surgical procedure. Such miscommunications among surgical team and pre and post-surgery care providers may lead to surgical site infection which is lethal to the patient being operated. Hospitals should get updated with recent findings on prevention and infection control and should find out the loop holes in the current strategies which they are following to implement a successful patient safety programs. There should be regular appreciations for the infection perfectionists or other staff who co-operate in maintaining infection free zone.
Each of the measures suggested above would keep infections away inside hospital and in surroundings when properly implemented and supported by all staff, patients and visitors.
