Infection Prevention & Hand Hygiene

Hospital hand hygiene is a major focus for the NHS and other healthcare institutions because its importance as an infection prevention technique is well researched and documented.  It is also increasingly a concern for anyone using shared commercial, retail and public buildings.

Dirty hands can routinely contaminate door handles and vice versa, spreading germs quickly.   To reduce germ transmission effectively, hands and the door handles they touch, must both be cleaned at the same time.  The Pure Hold Hygiene Handle achieves this in one elegant, effective design; and makes cleaning your hands effortless.

                 

It is widely recognised that there is a growing need to improve standards of hand hygiene in hospitals to prevent the spread of infection and ultimately save lives. The Handle does NOT replace the need for ‘point of care’ hand hygiene but is designed to be used in conjunction with it and reduce the risk of infections being brought in from the community and being spread between staff, patients and wards.

But it is not just in the NHS, hand hygiene is an important issue in private hospitals and other healthcare environments such as clinics, surgeries, health centres, care homes and hospices where people may be particularly vulnerable.  It also increasingly applies to shared commercial, retail and public buildings where the frequency of cleaning your hands isn’t as good as hand hygiene in hospitals.

Norovirus, MRSA, Flu and other virus outbreaks can spread easily and rapidly through work places, public buildings and public toilets, because of poor hand hygiene and cross-contamination from surfaces such as door handles. 

  80% of infection diseases are spread by touch, and yet studies show that :

  30% of the general public do NOT wash their hands after going to the toilet 

 64% of the general public who DO wash their hands, do NOT use soap 

 88% of the general public who DO wash their hands, do NOT wash their hands for long enough to kill germs

This means that the process of cleaning your hands is ineffective. 

The Pure Hold Hygiene Handle has been designed to address the problem of hand hygiene in NHS hospitals and other buildings.  In trials, installation of the Pure Hold Hygiene Handle increased rates of compliance with hospital hand hygiene standards by over 700%!

Matthew Richardson, Senior Infection Prevention Nurse at Queen Alexandra NHS Hospital explains,
“What people may not realise is that potentially harmful bacteria exist everywhere, even in the community.  When we are healthy our immune systems help protect us but it is hugely important that we find ways to stop these bugs getting into hospital wards where there are vulnerable patients.  The Hygiene Handle is another useful tool to help us in our task of protecting patients” - it does this by significantly increasing hospital hand hygiene compliance and in the long run will help improve overall NHS hand hygiene standards.