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Implementing Hand Hygiene Programs in Hospitals with Limited Resources

  • Treatment and Prevention of Hospital Infections (D Vilar-Compte, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Opinion Statement

Health care-associated infections can affect up to a third of all patients in low- and middle-income countries and represent a serious financial burden. Nevertheless, their control by means of hand hygiene faces various obstacles in this context such as the lack of adequately chlorinated water supplies, poor access to alcohol-based hand rub, lack of proper regulations and guidelines, and the scarcity of data on the impact of the hand hygiene programs on health care-associated infections in this setting. Notwithstanding the foregoing, there have been numerous efforts to implement strategies to improve hand hygiene. Outstanding among these is the World Health Organization strategies, which have been successfully implemented taking into account local context and resources. In addition to the WHO strategy is that of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) which implies hand hygiene guidelines for implementation exclusively in low- and middle-income countries. Moreover, various hospitals and health care facilities have developed their own multimodal strategies by using available resources with considerable success. There have been multiple efforts to implement hand hygiene programs around the world taking into account international strategies, while adapting them to local circumstances. This paper reviews these efforts to face the threat posed by HCAI in low- and middle-income countries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Dr. Márquez 162, Doctores, Del. Cuauhtémoc, Ciudad de México, CP 06720, México

    Daniela de la Rosa-Zamboni MD, MSc, Almudena Laris-González MD, Carlos Augusto Gómez-Ponce MD & Rodolfo Norberto Jiménez-Juárez MD, MSc

  2. Hospital General de Saltillo, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico

    Alicia Elhain de la Garza-López MD

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  1. Daniela de la Rosa-Zamboni MD, MSc
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  4. Rodolfo Norberto Jiménez-Juárez MD, MSc
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Correspondence to Daniela de la Rosa-Zamboni MD, MSc.

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Dr. Daniela de la Rosa-Zamboni declares that she has no conflict of interest. Dr. Almudena Laris-González declares that she has no conflict of interest. Dr. Carlos Augusto Gómez-Ponce declares that he has no conflict of interest. Dr. Rodolfo Norberto Jiménez-Juárez declares that he has no conflict of interest. Dr. Alicia Elhain de la Garza-López declares that she has no conflict of interest.

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de la Rosa-Zamboni, D., Laris-González, A., Gómez-Ponce, C.A. et al. Implementing Hand Hygiene Programs in Hospitals with Limited Resources. Curr Treat Options Infect Dis 9, 129–141 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40506-017-0115-y

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