ISLAMABAD: Health experts at a seminar suggested that Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) must be made an integral part of everyday clinical practice.
They were speaking to participants of a seminar titled ‘Strengthening Infection Prevention and Control (IPC)’ held at Polyclinic Hospital. An expert team from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), led by Dr Muhammad Amjad Khan, also attended the event.
Executive Director, Polyclinic Dr Shahzad Munir, suggested that simply washing hands before touching every newborn baby can decrease many neonatal crossinfections.
He suggested that surgeons maintain all efforts in the operation theatre environment to achieve zero infection risk, as open surgeries can become reason to get instrument infection as well. Post-operative dressing can be compromised by getting contamination during procedures.
Assistant Executive Director IPC Dr Nosheen Khalid said the burden of hospital-acquired infection was causing prolonged bed occupancy and economic loss of medical resources, which can be prevented by good practice of waste disposal and segregation of harmful waste.
Assistant Professor of community medicine and public health specialist Dr Abdul Jabbar Bhutto said the key message of the seminar was that IPC was everyone’s responsibility and must become an integral part of everyday clinical practice.
‘A tertiary-care hospital can achieve safer healthcare only when infection prevention is embedded into its systems, culture, behaviour, measurement, and continuous quality-improvement processes.
Public and communities shall follow the zero waste lifestyle to reduce, reuse and recycle where applicable and refuse the unwanted waste generation to minimise the trash and garbage that cause the contamination of atmosphere and environment leads to a lot of communicable diseases like gastrointestinal infection, respiratory tractinfection,food poisoning etc,’ he said.
It was emphasised that a substantial proportion of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) can be prevented when evidence-based IPC measures are implemented consistently and monitored effectively.