Country stories

Strong, effective infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes have the ability to influence the quality of care, improve patient safety and protect all those providing care in the health system. The implementation of all WHO recommendations on core components is required to build functioning programmes leading to the effective reduction of health care-associated infections and antimicrobial resistance.

The guidelines describe what is necessary to effectively improve IPC, according to the available evidence and wide-ranging expert consensus. A requirement for implementation success is to gain a solid understanding of each of the core components and, at the very lest, assuring implementation of the IPC minimum requirements – IPC standards that should be in place at the national and facility level to provide minimum protection and safety to patients, health workers and visitors. 

To help inspire your IPC implementation journey, WHO is and has been collecting country stories to showcase exemplars of IPC implementation as they relate to the WHO core components. Take a read below and see what IPC programmes are doing from around the world.

Core components for effective IPC programmes