Campaign urges health care professionals and patients and loved ones to keep hands clean
MONDAY, May 9, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has introduced a new campaign, “Clean Hands Count,” to encourage health care professionals, patients, and patients’ families to keep their hands clean in order to prevent health care-associated infections.
Studies show that some health care professionals do not follow CDC hand hygiene recommendations, with health care professionals cleaning their hands less than half of the time they should.
The new campaign promotes health care provider adherence to CDC recommendations, addressing misperceptions about hand hygiene, such as the belief that alcohol-based hand sanitizer contributes to antibiotic resistance and is damaging to hands versus soap and water. Patients and their loved ones should check whether their health care team members have washed their hands.
“Patients depend on their medical team to help them get well, and the first step is making sure health care professionals aren’t exposing them to new infections,” CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., said in a statement. “Clean hands really do count and in some cases can be a matter of life and death.”
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