Breaking the chain
In this feature, SC Johnson Professional explains to us how you can help to break the chain of infection inside your facility.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought infection transmission, control and prevention to the forefront of our collective consciousness, in all contexts – from schools and universities to offices, shops and transport hubs. As a result of widespread government guidance campaigns, most of us are aware that social distancing, face coverings and hand hygiene are the essential recommended behaviours for keeping ourselves and others around us safe.
Looking beyond the pandemic, a sustained focus on hand and surface hygiene will help to reduce the spread of many infectious pathogens in public spaces, helping our communities to live, work and play with more confidence in their environments.
With many organisations now trying to manage people safely in their facility – whether working, visiting or learning – there is an increasing requirement for facility managers to take an even more proactive role in helping and encouraging people to adopt safe behaviours in workplaces and public facilities, as part of the measures they take to make them as safe as practically possible. Of course, there is also a need for clear messaging to the people who visit or work in a facility to understand that their role is vital.
It’s about behaviours, not surfaces
There is a misconception that, to break the chain of infection, frequent cleaning and disinfection of environmental surfaces is the solution. Whilst regular disinfection of frequently touched surfaces does play a role in managing risk, it cannot alone create a safe environment since re-contamination may occur frequently. Instead, it’s the behaviour of people who come in to contact with each other and commonly touched surfaces that present the moments of highest transmission risk.
Therefore, to help break the chain of infection via hands and surfaces, the aim should be a sharp focus on the moments when infection can be passed by transfer via hands and commonly touched surfaces. By enabling individuals to take targeted hygiene actions at these moments, we can help reduce the risk of infection transmission.
Why hand hygiene is crucial
(
https://www.who.int/infection-prevention/campaigns/clean-hands/5moments/en/)
https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/policy/infection-control/too-clean-or-not-too-clean.html)
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One of the primary modes of infection transmission is via hands. Infected individuals spread pathogens from their hands to other people, either directly or via touching shared surfaces. Once contaminated, other people that contact these surfaces with their hands can then become infected themselves by touching their mouth, eyes or nose. Even with frequent disinfection, a commonly touched surface can become re-contaminated straight after cleaning if the next person that touches it is carrying infectious pathogens. To prevent this, we need to combine cleaning and disinfecting hand touch surfaces with effective hand hygiene at the
high-risk moments when hands can become contaminated or cause contamination.
This Targeted Hygiene approach is already widely used to promote effective hand hygiene in healthcare through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended ‘5 Moments for Hand Hygiene’. With the aim of reducing healthcare associated infections, '5 Moments' encourages hand hygiene practice when and where the risk of transmission is highest and in conjunction with other critical control measures during patient care.
Targeting workplaces/public facilities
SC Johnson Professional has collaborated with leading hygiene expert, Professor Sally Bloomfield, to create guidance called ‘8 Moments for Targeted Hygiene’ for any workplace or public facility. This guideline builds on the principles for targeted hygiene in the home and everyday jointly published by the International Scientific Forum for Home Hygiene (IFH) and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) in their 2019 ‘Too Clean or Not Too Clean’ report and policy paper.
The guidance for workplaces and public facilities identifies the following eight key moments when at work, or visiting a public facility, where the risk of infection transmission via the hands and surfaces is highest:
• Touching common surfaces • After coughing, sneezing, blowing your nose • Returning to and leaving your workspace • Getting food prepared • Eating food • Toilet use • Entering and exiting the building • Disposing of waste
By enabling and encouraging good hand and surface hygiene practices at each of these moments, facility owners and managers can help break the chain of infection.
Bloomfield commented: “Having worked to introduce the concept of Targeted Hygiene at home with the 9 Moments for Home Hygiene, we realised that creating a similar concept for ‘away from home’ environments provides the means to develop effective hygiene to prevent spread of COVID in public spaces.
“In the current climate especially, it’s hoped that the ‘8 Moments for Targeted Hygiene’ will help to drive behaviour change around hand and surface hygiene. The 'moments' approach is designed to prompt people to recognise the moments of risk when targeted hygiene is called for, rather
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