Spread the smile! Not the Infection

Apollo Hospitals observes Infection Control Week to spread knowledge among doctors, staff and patients about the importance of keeping away from infections. Dr. J. Radhakrishnan, Secretary, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of Tamilnadu inaugurated ‘spread the smile -not the infection’ titled this week long awareness drive today at Apollo Hospitals. Infection Control Week is an annual event at Apollo Hospitals to provide awareness and knowledge on the best practices in Hospital Infection control among doctors, staff and patients.

“The relationship between knowledge and power helps to employ and implement strategies to reduce infection and improve patient safety” – WHO

Due to the threat of ever increasing multi drug resistant microorganisms, infection perfectionists including doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals are emerging to control and prevent infections. Health care associated infections are defined as “”infections that are not present at admission and without evidence of incubation at the time of admission to a health care setting””. Doctors and infection perfectionists are central to every effort to reduce the risk of infection and they make the difference in the provision of quality infection prevention and control practices.

As a part of the week long campaign, a series of intensive and focused activities like painting/poster making competitions, lectures, workshops, debates, panel discussions, quiz competitions concentrating on infection control practices will be held between 3rd November to 8th November, 2012.

Elaborating on the Infection Control Week celebrations, Dr. Punitha Singh, Director, Nursing Services, Apollo Hospitals said, “”The main focus of this celebration is to share best practices among employees and to create benchmark in infection control practices. Today, infection control teams are key players in the fight to ensure the survival of infection control practices.””

She further added that, “”The infection control teams are responsible for collecting, analyzing and interpreting the infection related data’s, notifying the state government about the reportable diseases, and also planning, implementing, managing and evaluating infection prevention and control activities in the hospital.””

Creating awareness about the recent superbugs and the ways to prevent and control infections is given a paramount importance during the weeklong celebrations. Educating health care workers and patients on infection control is the important facet of this initiative of Apollo Hospitals.