Policy makers and facility managers: Invest now to ensure effective hand hygiene action at the point of care.
Purpose of this high level meeting: To drive national and local action mainly by high level decision makers, in order to sustain improved hand hygiene behaviour at the point of care. The meeting is organized in the context of the World Hand Hygiene Day 2021.
Objectives:
- Outline the case for the range of hand hygiene investment and improvement efforts to be taken in health care, especially by decision makers at national and facility level
- Showcase policy maker and national leads’ views on how to achieve hand hygiene action at the point of care, presenting their country improvement efforts related to the different aspects of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy
Expected Outcome: highlights of key success factors and calls to action from speakers
Main intended audience: those at national and facility level who can influence hand hygiene investment and programmes (i.e. decision-makers rather than frontline health care workers). Infection prevention and control (IPC), water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), quality of care and patient safety leads at national level, and WHO and other United Nations agencies representatives and technical leads are invited to join, as well as facility managers, donors, partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (chief executive and director level/technical leads) with an interest in improving hand hygiene in health-care facilities.
See the agenda below.
Time (CET) | Agenda item | Speaker |
1.00 | Meeting instructions and introduction of the chair | Professor Benedetta Allegranzi (WHO HQ IPC Hub) |
1.03 | Opening remarks | Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab (WHO Deputy Director General) Video |
1.13 | The case for investment in all elements of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy | System change – Dr Samuel Kaba Akoriyea (Director of Institutional Care Division, Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health, Ghana) Training and education – Dr Paula Daza, Public Health Undersecretary, Ministry of Health, Chile) Monitoring and feedback – Dr Paul Kelly (Chief Medical Officer, Australian Government Department of Health, Australia) Reminders and communications – Dr Mohammad Mehdi Gouya (Director-General of Communicable Diseases, Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention, Ministry of Health, Islamic Republic of Iran) Safety culture – Dr Suraya binti Amir Husin (Head of IPC Unit, Medical Development Division, Ministry of Health, Malaysia) and Dr Lee Yew Fong (Deputy Hospital Director, Sarawak General Hospital, Sarawak, Malaysia) Country roadmaps to enhance hand hygiene in all sectors – Mr Sanjay Wijesekera (Director of Programme Division, UNICEF HQ) Investment in hand hygiene improvement, with a focus on health care – Ms Soma Ghosh Moulik (Practice Manager with the Water Global Practice, World Bank) Global and country advocacy on hand hygiene in health care facilities, an NGO perspective – Mr Abdul-Nashiru Mohammed (Acting Regional Director for West Africa Wateraid) |
2.05 | Where do we go from here? | Professor Benedetta Allegranzi (WHO HQ IPC Hub) Ms Maggie Montgomery (WHO HQ WASH programme) |
2.15 | Main messages and call to action going forward | Professor Didier Pittet (University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland) |
2.25 | Closing remarks | Sir Liam Donaldson (WHO Special Envoy for Patient Safety) |