Policy & Regulations
Hand shaking is a Kenyan culture but how about some hand washing?
By Trudy Mbaluku
As hand hygiene campaigns continue to target school going children in a bid to prevent diarrhea, the campaigns should instead target doctors. Washing hands with soap, clean water or thoroughly rubbing hands with a sanitizer prevents disease causing germs from spreading. This could be from patient to patient in hospital or healthcare provider to patients and vice versa.
In a healthcare facility, hand hygiene compliance requires health workers to, among other things; wash their hands before and after touching a patient, after blood fluid exposure. In a study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, only seven in 50 of all health healthcare workers wash their hands after touching a patient.
Further, in the study titled: The deadly combination of antibiotic resistance and lapses in infection control in resource poor setting, only one in 50 healthcare workers wash their hands after blood fluid exposure, posing a risk on the health of a patient. Only one out of 14 doctors would wash their hand after touching a patient while two in five of nurses adhere to the practice.
In the latest Kenya Service Provision Assessment( SPA), only three in 25 hospitals in the country had all infection control items – disinfectant, adequate soap and running water.
28 November-December 2016