Department of Laboratory Medicine, Jai Prakash Narain Apex Trauma Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Indian J Med Res. 2011 Nov;134(5):611-20. doi: 10.4103/0971-5916.90985.
Health care associated infections are drawing increasing attention from patients, insurers, governments and regulatory bodies. This is not only because of the magnitude of the problem in terms of the associated morbidity, mortality and cost of treatment, but also due to the growing recognition that most of these are preventable. The medical community is witnessing in tandem unprecedented advancements in the understanding of pathophysiology of infectious diseases and the global spread of multi-drug resistant infections in health care set-ups. These factors, compounded by the paucity of availability of new antimicrobials have necessitated a re-look into the role of basic practices of infection prevention in modern day health care. There is now undisputed evidence that strict adherence to hand hygiene reduces the risk of cross-transmission of infections. With "Clean Care is Safer Care" as a prime agenda of the global initiative of WHO on patient safety programmes, it is time for developing countries to formulate the much-needed policies for implementation of basic infection prevention practices in health care set-ups. This review focuses on one of the simplest, low cost but least accepted from infection prevention: hand hygiene.
医疗保健相关感染越来越受到患者、保险公司、政府和监管机构的关注。这不仅是因为治疗相关发病率、死亡率和成本的问题的严重性，还因为人们越来越认识到，这些感染大多数是可以预防的。医学界正在见证传染病病理生理学的理解以及医疗保健环境中多药耐药感染的全球传播方面前所未有的进步。这些因素，加上新抗菌药物的缺乏，使得人们有必要重新审视感染预防的基本实践在现代医疗保健中的作用。现在已经无可争议的证据表明，严格遵守手卫生可以降低交叉感染的风险。随着“清洁护理更安全”成为世界卫生组织患者安全计划全球倡议的首要议程，发展中国家现在是时候制定急需的政策，在医疗保健环境中实施基本的感染预防实践了。本综述重点介绍了最简单、成本最低但最不受感染预防接受的实践之一：手卫生。
