Free COVID-19 online courses on OpenWHO
Standard precautions: Environmental cleaning and disinfection
The health care environment contains a diverse population of microorganisms and can be a reservoir for potential pathogens. If environmental cleaning is not performed correctly, then environmental contamination can contribute to the spread of multidrug-resistant organisms and health care-associated infections. Collaboration between infection prevention and control (IPC) and environmental services (EVS) staff limits the role of the health care environment in disease transmission.
Decontamination and sterilization of medical devices
The decontamination of instruments and medical devices plays a very important role in the prevention of health care-associated infections (HAIs). Indeed, improper decontamination of surgical instruments, endoscopic devices, respiratory care devices and reusable haemodialysis devices still occurs in many settings, leading to HAIs. This course is based on the WHO manual on decontamination and reprocessing of medical devices for health care facilities, as well as in collaboration with the US CDC.
Standard precautions: Hand hygiene
Most health care-associated infections are preventable through good hand hygiene – cleaning hands at the right times and in the right way. The WHO Guidelines on hand hygiene in health care support hand hygiene promotion and improvement in health care facilities worldwide and are complemented by the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy, the guide to implementation, and implementation toolkit, which contain many ready-to-use practical tools. This module has been prepared to help summarize the WHO guidelines on hand hygiene, associated tools and ideas for effective implementation.
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