Although there has been a reduction in the spread of infections at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), the Hospital Control Unit (HCU) is working hard to ensure there is even further decline.
That was the word from infection control nurse Alvin Hart as he spoke to Barbados TODAY this afternoon during an effort by the HCU to sensitize visitors about the importance of practising good hand hygiene.
Infection control nurses at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital handing out hand sanitizers to patients.
He said although he had no figures at hand, measures instituted by the department so far for the year had shown that the rate of the spread of infections at the health care facility was much lower than it was around this same time last year.
“But we have to keep on it because diseases are evolving, and old diseases are coming back. We cannot sit down and say we have achieved or we have arrived; we have to keep working on it,” he said.
Hart emphasized that infection control at the island’s only tertiary health care facility was always taken very seriously.
“We don’t rest on our laurels. Even when our data says that there is a reduction of infection, we keep doing what we are doing. We keep reinstituting new control measures, reviewing our policies; and we keep training and educating our staff on good infection control practices; and this is a very important component of what we do,” he said.
The infection control nurse explained that today’s activity, which coincided with QEH’s Hospital Control Week, was relevant as hand hygiene was one of the most basic methods used to control the spread of infections within the hospital, homes, schools, churches and the wider community.
“So today we are spending some time speaking about hand hygiene, telling the visitors about using hand sanitizers before they go into the wards, and when they exit. You don’t want to take anything in, and you don’t want bring anything out.
“So you are actually preventing yourself from getting infections and you are also preventing your relatives or loved ones on the wards from getting anything that might be out there in the community,” Hart said.