Ruth Walker, Executive Nurse Director with Yvonne Hyde, Senior Nurse for Infection Prevention and Control at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
Cleaning your hands is one of the most important actions anyone can carry out to prevent infection. For the past 15 years, patient safety organisations in the UK and the World Health Organisation globally, have been focused on making hand hygiene a routine behaviour in healthcare settings.
Each year on 5 May, the WHO issues a ‘call to action’ that promotes hand hygiene globally. The Infection Prevention Society (IPS) will be supporting this call to action through a Hand Hygiene Relay involving the transfer of a torch baton around the UK and Ireland.
The event will began on 5 May to coincide with the WHO ‘See Your Hands’ campaign and will finish on 26 September 2016 at the first day of Infection Prevention 2016 Conference in Harrogate.
The Torch Tour aims to:
- Raise awareness of the importance of hand hygiene among the general public
- Partner with other healthcare infection and patient organisations to highlight the annual World Health Organisation ‘Clean Your Hands – Call to Action’ for healthcare workers
On Monday 4 July, members of the Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) from the University Hospital of Wales will visit Cardiff landmarks with the torch to highlight the importance of good hand hygiene.
The team from IPC will visit Nessa’s slots arcade from the hit tv show Gavin and Stacey in Barry Island, the Millennium Centre and the Cardiff Bay Barrage.
Yvonne Hyde, Senior Nurse for Infection Prevention and Control at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “Campaigns such as the Torch Tour help to highlight the importance of good hand hygiene and ‘bring people together’ in support of hand hygiene improvement globally. Ultimately, having clean hands helps to save lives.”
To see tweets from the IPS Torch Tour, follow @IPS_Infection on Twitter and use #IPSTorchTour16 to get involved.
