World Hospitals and Health Services Vol. 50 No.

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Infection prevention and control
S
ince antiquity, health care-associated infection has been a
reality and a source of suffering for countless millions of
patients and their families worldwide, but patient safety has
only really become a major topic over the past 1015 years.
Despite a body of constantly expanding research, many questions
still remain. For example, the reasons for the uneven geographic
distribution of infection rates are not fully understood, notably the
striking differences in the epidemiology of nosocomial infections
and multiresistant bacteria between the United States and Europe.
Disparities may be explained by several determinants:
: surveillance methods, including diagnostic practices and
laboratory recognition;
: infection control practices;
: antibiotic prescribing practices;
: population characteristics and patient case-mix;
: cultural factors (e.g., human behaviour);
: factors related to the health care systems and available
resources;
: political commitment.
Clearly, the effects exerted at the macrolevel by the health care
system and the political environment contribute substantially to the
observed differences in infection rates, but these should serve also
as an additional incentive to drive forward innovation and creative
thinking for new preventive strategies.
Current conceptual thinking on patient safety places the prime
responsibility for adverse events on defects in system design,
organization and operation, rather than on individual providers or
individual products. Most adverse events, such as health care-
associated infection, are not the result of negligence or lack of
training, but rather occur because of latent causes within systems.
Safety is a fundamental principle of patient care and a critical
component of quality management. Infection control is the
DIDIER PITTET
DIRECTOR, INFECTION CONTROL PROGRAMME AND WHO COLLABORATING CENTRE ON PATIENT SAFETY, UNIVERSITY OF
GENEVA HOSPITALS AND FACULTY OF MEDICINE, SWITZERLAND AND LEAD ADVISOR, FIRST GLOBAL PATIENT SAFETY
CHALLENGE, WHO PATIENT SAFETY AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT UNIT, SERVICE DELIVERY AND SAFETY DEPARTMENT,
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Provoking Eureka moments for
effective infection control strategies
entrance door to patient safety and innovative strategies need to
be developed. However, most great ideas are not the result of a
flash of inspiration they are rather the result of hard efforts, team
work and conflict. Eureka moments do not happen overnight.
The Geneva hand hygiene model: A breakthrough innovation
In the mid-1990s, initial observation studies in Geneva showed a
low compliance with basic hand hygiene practices and a lack of
awareness by health care workers that the main cause of cross-
transmission of microorganisms is by hands (1). Time constraint
was identified as the major determinant for poor compliance (2).
The challenge was to facilitate hand hygiene for staff and to find an
innovative way to do so. We tried to think out of the box and to see
if perhaps there were sources of inspiration outside the infection
control field. This led us to investigate concepts from the social
sciences to help understand the main determinants driving health
care worker behaviour and that led to the creation of a multimodal
strategy. My own Eureka moment was when I realized that the
key component was obviously the introduction of alcohol-based
hand rub at the point of patient care to replace handwashing at the
sink (system change), thus bypassing the time constraint
imposed by handwashing (3).
Driving commitment to fight health care-associated infection
The first multimodal intervention ran from 1995 to 1998 at the
University of Geneva Hospitals with a spectacular decrease of 50%
in hospital-associated infections and almost 80% in methicillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus transmission in parallel with a
sustained improvement in compliance with hand hygiene. The
methodology and results were published in the Lancet in 2000 with
a tremendous impact and the strategy soon became known in the
scientific literature as The Geneva hand hygiene model (3).
Furthermore, the strategy proved to be largely cost-effective when
ABSTRACT: Safety is now a fundamental principle of patient care and a critical component of quality management. Health
care-associated infection prevention strategies need to be constantly revisited and updated to be effective. The Geneva
hand hygiene model is a typical example of a breakthrough innovatory campaign that caught fire and went viral
worldwide, thanks to its adoption by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the First Global Patient Safety Challenge.
The campaign remains an inspiration for further innovation. To encourage new and disruptive technologies with the
potential to improve patient safety through the successful implementation of the WHO multimodal strategy, the University
of Geneva Hospitals/WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, together with the Aesculap Academy, have created a
series of Hand Hygiene Excellence Awards and Hand Hygiene Innovation Awards worldwide.
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Infection prevention and control
8 World Hospitals and Health Services Vol. 50 No. 2
assessed after eight years, with cost savings reaching US$ 24
million per year in the early phase (4). In 2002, the United Kingdom
converted to The Geneva model and built up the national
CleanYourHands campaign, which proved to be both successful
and cost-effective. Today, for US$ 1 invested, the return on
investment is at least US$ 20.
In 2004, I was approached by the World Health Organization to
disseminate and export our multimodal strategy worldwide under
the banner of the WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge
Clean Care is Safer Care (5). The mandate was to galvanise
global commitment among nations and policy-makers to tackle
health care-associated infection, which had been identified as a
significant area of risk for patients in all 194 Member States, with
hand hygiene as the cornerstone of the Challenge. In 2009, WHO
added a Save Lives: Clean Your Hands initiative that attracted the
adhesion of more than 17,000 health care facilities worldwide as of
May 2014. Among the flagships of the implementation strategy, the
two most popular cues for action are the posters promoting When
to handrub as described in My five moments for hand hygiene
(6, 7) and now translated in more than 100 languages throughout
the world and How to handrub, now featured in more than 100
hand hygiene dance videos from all continents (see videos (8,9))
(Figures 1 and 2).
Promoting a climate to inspire inovation and improve
infection control
To encourage new and disruptive technologies with the potential to
improve patient safety through the successful implementation of
the WHO multimodal strategy, the University of Geneva Hospitals
and the WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, in
conjunction with the Aesculap Academy, have created a series of
Hand Hygiene Excellence Awards and Hand Hygiene Innovation
Awards worldwide: in the Asia-Pacific region since 2010, in
Europe since 2012, and in Latin America in 2014. These Awards
are conceived as a platform to identify, recognize, honour and
celebrate those hospitals and health care worker groups who have
contributed to improving patient safety through their excellence,
enthusiasm and innovatory methods. A unique process has been
developed for the Awards. First, the hospitals use the WHO-
developed Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework
(http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/hhsa_framework/en/), a systematic,
validated tool to obtain a situation analysis of hand hygiene
promotion and practices within an individual health care facility (10,
11, 12). Based on their score and other criteria, selected hospitals
are visited by two members of the international panel of leading
infection control experts. Finalists then undergo a half-day visit of
experts for further evaluation of their programmes against set
criteria for creativity, innovation and local/regional leadership. A
large number of tools, based on evidence and the results of
implementation worldwide (13, 14) are available for health care
settings to improve their scores towards achieving excellence in
patient safety. Award winners in the respective regions are listed in
Table 1.
Another innovation has been the designation of Global Hand
Hygiene Expert Centres by the WHO Collaborating Centre on
Patient Safety in recognition of outstanding efforts to promote hand
hygiene excellence. In 2011, the Singapore General Hospital
(Singapore), Queen Mary Hospital (Hong Kong, S.A.R), and the
Austin Health Hospital (Australia) received this nomination for the
Asia Pacific region. In June 2013, The Charit University Hospital
(Berlin, Germany) received the award for the Europe region.
Experts from these centres visit hospitals in their regions to allocate
excellence awards and suggest further improvements.
Mobilizing patients and raising public awareness
Among the next challenges to improve patient safety are
considering patients as partners and raising public awareness of
the critical importance of optimizing both institutional systems and

Figure 1: My 5 moments for hand hygiene
Region Year Health care institution

Asia Pacific 2010 Artemis Health Institute
Haryana / India
Monash Medical Centre
Clayton (VIC) / Australia
2011 Dr Sardjito General Hospital
Yogyakarta / Indonesia
National Taiwan University Hospital
Taipei City / Taiwan, R.O.C.

2012 Bethesda Hospital
Claremont (W.A.) / Australia
West China Hospital of Sichuan University
Sichuan / R.O.C.
Cho Ray Hospital
Ho Chi Minh City / Viet Nam
Hong Kong Baptist Hospital
Kowloon / Hong Kong, S.A.R
Europe 2013 Mater Private Hospital
Dublin / Republic of Ireland
Spitalul Sf. Constantin
Brasov / Romania
Latin/Central America 2014 86 applications have been received
The Award will be presented in August 2014
Table 1: Hand hygiene excellence award winners
www.handhygieneexcellenceaward.com
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World Hospitals and Health Services Vol. 50 No. 2 9
Infection prevention and control
health care staff behaviour. The odyssey of hand hygiene
promotion has been recently addressed in a book for the lay public
authored by the French writer Thierry Crouzet and published on 5
May 2014 WHO World Hand Hygiene Day in six languages (15).
The foreword of the book is co-authored by Dr Margaret Chan,
WHO Director-General, and Sir Liam Donaldson, WHO Patient
Safety Envoy. The book reveals also a new path open to human
society, from a predatory economy system to an economy of
peace.
Conclusion
Strong advocacy and leadership with an inherent innovatory
capacity are required to maintain patient safety high on the political
agenda, particularly in resource-poor countries where there are
many competing priorities. The challenge is to develop strategies
and campaigns with a potential for adaptability to diverse cultures
and varying resources. o
Professor Didier Pittet is the Director of the Infection Control
Programme and WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety at
the University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine,
Switzerland. He is also the lead adviser of the WHO Global
Patient Safety Challenge Clean Care is Safer Care, currently
active in 171 of the 194 WHO Member States. In 2007, he was
awarded an honorary CBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II for services
to the prevention of health care-associated infections in the
United Kingdom.
References
1. Pittet D, Dharan S, Touveneau S, Sauvan V, Perneger TV. 1999. Bacterial contamination of
the hand of hospital staff during routine patient care. Archives of Internal Medicine 159:
821-826.
2. Pittet D, Mourouga P, Perneger TV, and the Members of the Infection Control Program.
1999. Compliance with handwashing in a teaching hospital. Annals of Internal Medicine
130: 126-130.
3. Pittet D, Hugonnet S, Harbarth S, Mourouga P, Sauvan V, Touveneau S, Perneger TV. 2000.
Effectiveness of a hospital-wide programme to improve compliance with hand hygiene.
Lancet 356: 1307-1312.
4. Pittet D, Sax H, Hugonnet S, Harbarth S. 2004. Cost implications of successful hand
hygiene promotion. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology 25: 264-266.
5. Pittet D, Donaldson L. 2005. Clean Care is Safer Care: a worldwide priority. Lancet
366:1246-1247.
6. Pittet D, Allegranzi B, Sax H, Dharan S, Pessoa-Silva CL, Donaldson L, Boyce JM. 2006.
Evidence-based model for hand transmission during patient care and the role of improved
practices. Lancet Infectious Diseases 6: 641-652.
7. Sax H, Allegranzi B, Uckay I, Larson E, Boyce J, Pittet D. 2007. My five moments for hand
hygiene: a user-centred design approach to understand, train, monitor and report hand
hygiene. Journal of Hospital Infection 67: 9-21.
8. World Health Organization/University of Geneva Hospitals. V1- Hand hygiene dance.
http://tinyurl.com/HandHygieneDanceWHOGeneva
9. University of Geneva Hospitals. V2- Hand hygiene: from rubbing to dancing.
http://tinyurl.com/HandHygieneRubToDance
10. World Health Organization. Hand hygiene self-assessment framework. 2010. Available at:
http://www.who.int/gpsc/country_work/hhsa_framework_October_2010.pdf. Accessed
December 12, 2013.
11. Stewardson AJ, Allegranzi B, Perneger TV, Attar H, Pittet D. 2013. Testing the WHO hand
hygiene self-assessment framework for usability and reliability. Journal of Hospital Infection
83: 30-35.
12. Allegranzi B, Conway L, Larson E, Pittet D. 2014. Status of the implementation of the
World Health Organization multimodal hand hygiene strategy in United States of America
healthcare facilities. American Journal of Infection Control 42: 224-230.
13. World Health Organization. WHO guidelines on hand hygiene in healthcare. 2009. Available
at: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241597906_eng.pdf. Accessed May 22,
2014.
14. World Health Organization. Guide to implementation: a guide to the implementation of the
WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy. 2009. Available at:
http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Implementation.pdf. Accessed May 22, 2014.
15. Crouzet T. Clean Hands Save Lives, Editions lAge dHomme, 2014 (T. Clegg & T. Crouzet),
ISBN 978-2-8251-4432-9. Available in 6 languages also from http://blog.tcrouzet.com/
le-geste-qui-sauve/downloads/
Figure 2: How to handrub
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