5 May is ‘save lives, clean your hands’ day, part of a major global effort by the World Health Organisation to improve hand hygiene in healthcare. The WHO estimates that more than 30 million patients each year are affected by sepsis worldwide, and poor hand hygiene is one of the most common causes.

Sepsis frequently results from infections that patients acquire whilst in hospital, receiving treatment for their underlying condition. A particular concern is that neonatal sepsis is one of the leading reported infectious causes of mortality among newborn babies, and one in ten maternal deaths worldwide is due to sepsis.

One of the most important strategies for preventing sepsis is ensuring appropriate hand hygiene action in hospitals and other healthcare environments. Anti-microbial resistance is a growing threat and can make treating sepsis difficult, so prevention via hand hygiene and other measures is really critical.

We’ve written here before about the debate regarding the use of sensor taps in the context of healthcare environments. Assuming that you choose a brand that’s suitable for healthcare and that they’re installed, maintained and cleaned correctly we firmly believe that sensor taps are more hygienic than any other kind of tap.

That’s why our Conti+ Ultra range is being installed throughout the new Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Birmingham and is in use in hospitals and surgeries throughout Europe, and our miscea classic tap is a popular choice for dentists, including the Sussex Implant Centre, Prais Dental Care and Philip Friel Dentistry.

The WHO and other renowned health organisations such as the Robert Koch Institute in Germany all recommend the use of sensor activated taps in healthcare environments, particularly because of their ability to dispense not only water but also soap and disinfectant, all touch-free. A 100% touch-free handwashing operation completely prevents the risk of cross contamination, a significant risk factor in the spread of sepsis.

Our sensor taps don’t just help protect against sepsis. Both the miscea and the Conti+ taps have an auto flush function which also protects against legionella, automatically running a regular flushing cycle to prevent growth of bacteria found in stagnant water. The miscea tap also comes with a remote control enabling you to programme the flushing cycle to your precise requirements.

“Dental practices all need to comply with new rules for CQC and this is almost an ideal product when it comes to the hand washing. Hand washing is notoriously a fairly messy business because you need to have separate dispensers for your soap, for disinfectant and hand lotion whereas this is all encased in one product.

The main benefit is that it makes hand washing a fairly simple task. It should be a simple task to start off with but because we have to comply with all the rules now it actually can get quite complicated. This gives you all the options without even touching the tap and you don’t need to worry about making a mess of everything.”

Dr Werner Slabbert