NIH sets up centre for occupational, patient safety

Islamabad: The National Institute of Health in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) has established the Centre for Occupational and Patient Safety (COPS) and also developed infection prevention control (IPC) guidelines.

According to NIH Executive Director Major-General Aamer Ikram, the COPS is meant to provide continues strategic guidance, capacity building, research and invalidation in facilitation the leaders at all levels to embrace, create, and implement tools of occupational safety.

"The centre will offer a range of programmes to raise awareness and expedite implementation of ideas and best practices to achieve transformation in patient safety. It will also play an instrumental role to enhance patient experience, reduce risks and harm and achieve better health outcomes to improve healthcare quality in Pakistan," he said.

The NIH chief said currently, there was no formal infection prevention and control programme either at the national, provincial or facility levels, so the IPC guidelines could be practiced throughout the country for the prevention of infection, especially in context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

He said the main objective of the guidelines was to provide basic and simple IPC knowledge and practices to prevent the healthcare workers and patients from different kind infections. "These Infection Prevention and Control guidelines will be implemented at all times for extending safe care in all healthcare facilities (primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities- in both private and public sectors) as a part of the routine (standard) practices in healthcare environment specially in context of COVID-19," he said.

The NIH chief said the guidelines were prepared with the help of experts from the WHO and a National Technical Working Group comprising medical microbiologists, infectious diseases physicians and consultants in public health from all over the country.

He added that the entire exercise was facilitated by the NIH. Major-General Aamer Ikram said we are optimistic that the effective implementation of these simple IPC practices and functions of COPS would have an enormous positive impact in reducing healthcare-associated infections, and improving patient safety levels.

He also said the guidelines would influence antimicrobial consumption and strengthen the Antibiotic Stewardship program to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance, which was a global priority. "The guidelines and centre will help the healthcare workers in prevention and safety form the diseases like COVID-19," he said.

WHO country representative Dr. Palitha G Mahipala highlighted the importance of clean care, including hand hygiene best practices and the central role health care workers play in it.

"Clean care has always been recognised as one of the WHO’s urgent challenges to be tackled but in times of COVID-19, this has become even more important. The WHO has three priorities for responding to COVID-19 pandemic: protecting health workers, engaging communities to protect those at the highest risk of severe disease and supporting vulnerable countries for containment of infection," he said.