Alcohol gel supplies for patients suggested
Personal hand cleanser could be offered |
Hospital patients could be given personal supplies of alcohol-based hand cleanser to be offered to health professionals before they treat them as a way of tackling hospital-acquired infections.
In his 2006
chief medical officer’s report on the state of public
health in England, Sir Liam Donaldson says: “Patients and their
families would be educated on the correct use of this handrub and empowered
to supply it to health care professionals before every consultation and
to utter those challenging words — ‘Have you cleaned your
hands?’.”
Currently, 8 per cent of all adult patients in hospital at any one time
have a health care-associated infection. The National Audit Office estimated
that there are 300,000 such infections each year and that 5,000 patients
may die
as a result. This equates to an infection of a patient every two minutes
and the death of a patient every two hours. The annual cost to the NHS
is approximately £1bn. Professor Donaldson contrasts this with
the estimated £3,000 annual cost of providing hand cleanser at
every bedside in a 500-bed hospital.
Another change advocated by Professor Donaldson is intended to increase
the supply of organs for transplantation. His proposal is to create an
opt-out system so that everyone’s organs can be used for transplantation
after death unless they have registered an objection.
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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