Hand Hygiene promotion in Iran

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) have serious impact on healthcare systems, causing significant morbidity, mortality, and increased financial losses. Hand hygiene (HH) is the best way for prevention of HAIs and antimicrobial resistance. Improving adherence to hand hygiene practices needs multimodal and multidisciplinary strategies. Making alcohol-based hand rub available, education and training, routine observation and feedback, reminders in the workplace, improve institutional safety climate such as promote active participation at individual and institutional level, avoid overcrowding, understaffing, excessive workload, institute administrative sanction/rewarding and ensure patient empowerment are the components of effective hand hygiene program. Education and training is recommended as a core component of valid infection control programmes by the World Health Organization (WHO). We conducted a HH Train-the-Trainers course for training infection control and prevention (IPC) professionals in healthcare facilities in Iran by leading of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, based on the Geneva Hand Hygiene programme . The TTT programme consisted of a 3-day, 25-hour face-to-face course. We started the first TTT course in Mashhad in 2017 then the second TTT in Shiraz in 2019. The TTT course made the foundation for standardized training of IPC professionals.