Clean Care is Safer Care

The five elements of the First Global Patient Safety Challenge

Blood safety

The following actions to improve blood safety are integrated within the Global Patient Safety Challenge through the:

  • promotion of optimal hand hygiene associated with procedures for collection, processing and use of blood products;
  • promotion of donor skin antisepsis to prevent blood contamination;
  • in-service education and training on safe transfusion practices at the bedside.

Injection and immunization safety

The following actions to improve injection safety are integrated within the Global Patient Safety Challenge:

  • promotion of optimal hand hygiene practices at time of injection and immunization;
  • strengthening of high-level commitment within countries to use auto-disable syringes for immunization services;
  • actions to ensure the safe disposal of sharps as part of integrated management of waste within health-care facilities.

Safe clinical procedures

The following actions to improve the safety of clinical procedures are integrated within the Global Patient Safety Challenge:

  • specific education programmes promoting safety in surgical procedures, tailored to the needs of health-care facilities;
  • surgical hand preparation using either antimicrobial soap and water or alcohol-based hand rub to reduce infections associated with surgical procedures;
  • Access to safe emergency and essential surgical care, including the availability and use of best practice protocols on clinical procedures and equipment.

Safe water and sanitation in health care

The following actions to improve water quality and availability, and waste management, are integrated within the Global Patient Safety Challenge:

  • ensuring access and water quality to support hygiene, and hand hygiene in particular, at the level of health-care facilities;
  • ensuring sound management of waste, particularly of highly infectious health-care waste.

Hand Hygiene

The following actions to improve hand hygiene are integrated within the Global Patient Safety Challenge:

  • strengthening high-level commitment within countries to implement national strategies to promote hand hygiene;
  • testing implementation of the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care (Advanced Draft) in specific districts worldwide.

Key documents

Hand hygiene guidelines cover

WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care (revised Aug 2009)

Guide to implementation cover

Guide to implementation of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy (revised Aug 2009)

Videos

Contact us

For more information about Clean Care is Safer Care, please contact the team at savelives@who.int.