On 5th May, the Ministry of Health (MoH) celebrated its 9th anniversary of Hand Hygiene Day with “Save Lives: Clean Your Hands” as its theme. The workshop also was joined by more than 300 participants from the MoH, eight national hospitals in Phnom Penh, provincial hospitals from seven provinces, health science students from the University of Health Sciences and six private universities, as well as partner organizations such as WHO, WaterAid and GIZ.
Speaking at the Ministry of Health’s headquarters, Dr Cheu Sivuthy, Chief of the Hospital Service Department of the Ministry presented on general overview of infection prevention and control focusing on roles of skin, including for hands, as barrier of protection against abrasive action and microorganisms and generally acts as a permeability barrier to external environment. However, hands of health-care workers can become contaminated and spread microbes (including antibiotic resistance) to patients. Therefore, hand hygiene is an essential, simple and low-cost strategy to prevent and reduce the spread of healthcare-associated infections, including antibiotic resistance, which frequently spread between patients through the hands of health-care workers, he added.
Dr Asheena Khalakdina, acting WHO representative to Cambodia, stressed the critical role of hand hygiene to prevent and reduce healthcare-associated infections, save money, and enhance quality of integrated, people-centered health services towards universal health coverage (UHC). Furthermore, she called for every health care worker at every level of health care facilities to comply with hand hygiene during the WHO’s recommended “5 Moments for Hand Hygiene” to support people centered quality health services. This means that health worker should have hands cleaned: 1) before touching a patient, 2) before clean/aseptic procedures, 3) after body fluid exposure/risk, 4) after touching a patient, and 5) after touching patient surroundings.
H.E. Prof Thea Kruy, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Health, reemphasized the key points from Dr Asheena Khalakdina, and called for all health care workers to be role models for others, especially patients and their families.
During the workshop, staff members from the Infection Prevention and Control Team of the Hospital Service Department went on the stage to show the steps of hand washing with alcohol hand rub to the participants. Also, participants were invited to take quizzes related to infection prevention and control (IPC) and Hand Hygiene and join group competition on hand hygiene performance.
At the end of the event, senior leadership of the Ministry of Health and other participants signed Hand Hygiene board (shown in above picture) to show their commitment to hand hygiene practice.