Saraya, a Member of Clean Hospitals
During Interclean, the world's largest cleaning trade show celebrated in May 2018, at Amsterdam, both the first Healthcare Cleaning Forum and the Clean Hospitals Industry Platform where launched by Professor Didier Pittet, with the goal of tackling the growing communication gap between the cleaning industry and healthcare facilities, in order to provide concrete answers to the issues faced in the sector by raising industry standards and increasing the importance of environmental hygiene in patient care. The Healthcare Cleaning Forum was designed as a platform for healthcare experts, cleaning experts, hospital managers and industry to meet in a productive way, summarizing all the state-of-the-art knowledge in the field, creating awareness and dialogue, challenging dogma and reshaping the research agenda for the development of the field on hospital hygiene and environmental control.
At Saraya, the above points align with our objectives as a key figure in the healthcare hygiene world. During the Interclean forum where we participated as a sponsor, we invited Professor Ojan Assadian, who held a presentation titled "Alcohol-based hand rubs as key partners to limit the spread of microbial pathogens in the healthcare environment", bringing awareness about the importance of combining hand hygiene and environmental hygiene (cleaning and disinfecting). Healthcare facilities are facing the major challenge that is Infection Prevention, with not only needing to improve their environmental hygiene to lower the cases of healthcare-associated infections but also to reduce antimicrobial resistance, which would be of great benefit to the public health. For these reasons, we are glad to partake in the Clean Hospitals Industry platform, a step forward to a healthier world, allowing industry experts and hospital management to work together, ensuring clean and safe hospitals for all patients and healthcare workers.
What is the Clean Hospital Industry platform?
Clean Hospital is an industry platform, connecting stakeholders, leading experts in Infection Prevention and hospitals to collaborate across disciplines. Its main areas of focus are surfaces, air, water, waste and sterilization/device reprocessing as hospital environmental hygiene is far more complex than other types of cleaning and needs to protect patients. Its activities gather academic research, education and training, raising awareness on the work organization and their environmental hygiene personnel have, the core of the proposal for the creation of this global initiative.
The main objectives of Clean Hospitals in which we are fully participating are:
- Increasing hospitals’ awareness of the importance of maintaining a hygienic environment
- Changing how hospitals calculate the cost/benefit of investing in better cleaning products and services
- Developing comprehensive training and education programs
- Championing high-quality products/processes for environmental hygiene, instrument disinfection/sterilization, waste management, air, and water treatment
- Building up the body of evidence demonstrating the impact of improved environmental hygiene in healthcare settings and patient/worker safety
- Aligning knowledge and procedures and improving hospital environmental hygiene recommendations across geographic regions and resource levels
- Enhancing corporate social responsibility in the companies that produce or provide products and services for hospital environmental hygiene”
