Author: WHO

GLOSS featured on MSD for Mothers website!

Posted on by WHO

GLOSS has engaged a multitude of people across the globe and its impact has been very positive. MSD for Mothers featured the study and campaign, including voices from the field in their latest blog post. We are encouraged by the commitment and effort from everyone involved, and especially from the countries here featured.

Please follow this link to see the publication: http://msdformothers.com/blog/assessing-addressing-maternal-sepsis.html.

Save lives campaign materials

Posted on by WHO

A few weeks ago we announced the theme for this year’s WHO Save lives campaign. We wanted to share two new infographics developed around the issue of preventing sepsis in healthcare facilities. They have also created a short video on the campaign that we invite you to watch and share.

Link to infographic (size A2): http://www.who.int/infection-prevention/campaigns/clean-hands/Sepsis_infographic_A2.pdf?ua=1

Link to infographic (size A3): http://www.who.int/infection-prevention/campaigns/clean-hands/Sepsis_infographic_A3.pdf?ua=1 

And remember to register your facility for the campaign if you haven’t already!

Surgical site infections

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According to WHO, surgical site infections (SSI) are the most frequent type of infection acquired during healthcare delivery in developing countries. Infections are also the most frequent complication following surgery across Africa. A recently published study in The Lancet reported that the most common procedure in 25 countries in Africa was caesarean section (33%), and infections were the most common complication resulting from overall surgeries. Among patients who died as a result of surgery, about 8% were as a result of a caesarean surgery.

Preventing surgical site infections is important in maternal health.

Read more about SSIs and what WHO is doing to prevent them here.

Save lives campaign: It’s in your hands – Prevent sepsis in health care

Posted on by WHO

This year, WHO’s “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign focuses on sepsis in health care facilities. We encourage you to sign-up for the campaign (if you haven’t already!). We also wanted to share a publication written by our colleagues from the Infection Prevention and Control team at WHO on this campaign. They are calling on the global community for support in the prevention of sepsis.

Please share with your networks and use the links below to get information about this year’s campaign.

العربية: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/ar/

中文: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/zh/

English: http://www.who.int/infection-prevention/campaigns/clean-hands/en/

Français: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/fr/

Русский: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/ru/

Español: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/es/

 

WHO collective work on sepsis

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After the 70th World Health Assembly resolution on improving the prevention, diagnosis, and management of sepsis, different departments within WHO have been working in this pursuit. In mid-January WHO launched a new page on sepsis, and the Department of Reproductive Health and Research now has a special page focusing on maternal sepsis.

You can also access these sub-sites through the Resources page on the GLOSS website.

First Global antimicrobial resistance surveillance system (GLASS) report

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WHO’s Global antimicrobial resistance surveillance system was created in 2015 “to support global surveillance and research in order to strengthen the evidence base on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and help informing decision-making and drive national, regional, and global actions.” On 29 January 2018, they released their first report revealing high levels of resistance to a number of serious bacterial infections. For this report 40 countries, representing low- and high-income countries, provided information about their national surveillance systems and 22 countries also provided data on levels of antibiotic resistance.

Some of the most commonly resistant bacteria were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae, followed by Salmonella spp. And, among those patients with suspected infection the proportion who were resistant to at least one of the most commonly used antibiotics reached as high as 82%. This is extremely worrying in the face of sepsis, and management of infections among women. Read the full report here.

GLOSS update!

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We have been a bit quiet on our website… because we’ve been super busy on the ground! Follow-up ended on Monday 15 January 2018. We identified over 2 700 women during identification week (28 November to 04 December 2017); by end of follow-up very few women remained hospitalized.

We wanted to thank everyone involved in this enormous, collective effort! All regional and country coordinators for ensuring women were correctly identified and followed-up, including assuring data quality. We also want to thank all the facility coordinators (about 500 of them!) for making sure the study ran smoothly on the ground. Lastly, but not least, we wanted to also thank the data collectors and data entry people who have been relentless in their diligence.

We are excited for the upcoming weeks and months as we finalize data gathering and get around to understanding what they tell us.