On the next 10th of October we celebrate the first edition of Clean Hospitals Day. This is an event organized by Clean Hospitals, a Global Healthcare Environmental Hygiene Network of which Diversey is a proud active member together with a coalition of international stakeholders, academia, governmental bodies, NGO’s, hospitals and industry Experts. As active members, we work closely together to promote and support Healthcare Environmental Hygiene through training, specialized working groups and committees, aiming to create awareness, look at research, innovations, new methods and support education to eventually make healthcare facilities safer through improved environmental hygiene.
Supporting the first edition of Clean Hospitals Day
Diversey has been working with Clean Hospitals and all its partners to launch this first edition of Clean Hospitals Day, which has two main objectives:
- To call on hospital management, decision makers & stakeholders to champion environmental hygiene and to take action to make hospitals cleaner and safer.
- Recognize key healthcare workers, give them the appreciation they deserve as their work is very important and often goes unnoticed and is undervalued.
By raising awareness of the importance of cleaning, disinfection and hygiene standards in the healthcare environment, we will all be contributing towards making healthcare facilities a cleaner and safer place. Help us spread the message and recognize the important work carried out by key healthcare workers!
Clean Hospitals: a win-win for all parties involved in Healthcare Environmental Hygiene
Clean Hospitals provides a unique blend of experience and expertise around environmental hygiene coming from multiple stakeholders across regions. That enables this young platform to continuously seek the highest standards of environmental hygiene in a consistent and globally coordinated manner.
According to Victor Cegarra, ‘Clean Hospitals represents a formidable platform for Diversey to join the dots about environmental hygiene, and ultimately help us make hospitals and patients safer. In Clean Hospitals we have a venue to share and discuss current and future topics of concern with stakeholders and leading experts from around the world’. The range of topics explored are very diverse but important for the evolution of environmental hygiene. Issues like fighting against antimicrobial resistance, fake news or multiple safety concerns are being addressed.
At Diversey, we provide evidence based solutions to reduce infections, and improve outcomes for a healthier world. We partly do that with a broad selection of products to clean and disinfect surfaces effectively and responsibly for staff and end users in many different markets. According to Claire Khosravi, ‘Diversey having a global footprint is a key representative in the Infection Prevention world and is therefore useful for Clean Hospitals. Diversey and Clean Hospitals share the same goals to increase productivity and patient safety to ultimately create safer and more satisfying environments of care.’
Part of Diversey’s focus on improving Infection Prevention practices in Healthcare globally
In preventing infection, especially in healthcare facilities, hands and surfaces are two sides of the same coin of environmental hygiene. According to Peter Teska, ‘working on one at the expense of the other is self-defeating. In the same way Diversey promotes effective hand hygiene through our participation in POPS (Private Organizations for Patient Safety), we also support Clean Hospitals to focus on environmental disinfection. Clean hands that touch dirty surfaces negates the value of hand hygiene. Touching clean surfaces with dirty hands negates the value of surface hygiene. Both must be promoted together to properly protect patients.’
In the last decade a significant amount of clinical evidence has been amassed showing the role the environment plays in certain healthcare associated infections. Clean Hospitals is an ideal organization to help healthcare facilities operationalize this knowledge, working to improve cleaning practices and identifying areas of risk within the facility.
According to Jolanta Stasiewicz, ‘COVID-19 pandemic has already changed global healthcare systems on many levels, as we are entering a new era of patient care where preventing infection will play an even more important role. Creation of safe and hygienic environments is a mandatory action for healthcare stakeholders, but also a day to day challenge. And that is where Diversey, as part of Clean Hospitals, is committed to help. With more than 95 years of history and more than 50 years actively working with healthcare facilities, the Diversey team supporting this initiative is very excited to be part of it and committed to help healthcare facilities management get access to best in class and up to date guidelines, share and drive research, innovations and training.’
Authors:
Dr. Claire Khosravi - European Senior Microbiologist & IP Technical Lead
Jolanta Stasiewicz - European Healthcare Marketing Leader
Peter Teska - CoE IP& Healthcare, Global IP Application Expert
Victor Cegarra - CoE IP& Healthcare, Global Marketing Director
To access the press release issued by Clean Hospitals, click HERE.
