Heads of departments in health centres have been urged to comply with all the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) standards at all times.
The Officer in Chief, Public Health Division 37 Military Hospital, Captain Edward Owusu Nyarko made the call during the closing ceremony of the IPC week in Accra yesterday on the theme “The future is infection prevention: 50 years of infection prevention.”
The International IPC week is an annual event celebrated globally to emphasise the importance of infection prevention and control in healthcare facilities.
The goal of the IPC programme, Captain Nyarko said was to prevent health care associated infections and to guard against anti microbial infections to ensure quality health care.
“In order to sustain the fight against infections, 28 health professionals from the military hospital were given training,” he stated.
Captain Nyarko noted that, aside the trainings, the IPC team periodically monitored, inspected the various wards and would continue to do so in order to ensure their compliance.
“The team also made some recommendations during the assessments on needs for more improvements and we hope to have more dedicated teams,” he said.
Emphasising that, there was a need to keep the consistency and efforts going strong since the pathogens faced knew no boundaries.
The Deputy Director of Quality Assurance at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Mary Ashinyo indicated that, IPC must go beyond the just ended week as that was the only way to promote the health and wellbeing of patients.
“We must also try to adapt to the global safety action plan and with that, I know this awareness would help improve patients’ safety and quality of care,” she said.
Further she advised that, more support, leadership, supervision and equipments must be given to the health care workers to attain high level of safety.
As part of the weeklong celebration, a series of activities including competitive infection prevention and control inspections were undertaken at the various wards.
James Cole ward emerged first as the best for this year’s Infection Prevention and Control Compliance Inspection.
BY ANITA ANKRAH
