2021 was the year of recovery. As facilities started adapting to the “new normal”, the common man followed suit. The cleaning industry was no exception to this. It was swift to learn what was required from it to make the world a safer place to live in. It came up with innovations and services that catalyzed the return of the world to normal. 

This year further strengthens the resolve of the cleaning industry to safeguard the world. We see the stakeholders of this industry resolve to provide better hygiene to everyone.

In this issue, we speak to a popular hypermarket, a healthcare infection control professional and a hotelier about their new year resolutions - only to find that they revolve around hygiene. 

Mohammed Berregad Alfalasi, Admin Affairs Director, Union Coop

The hygiene best practices you undertook in 2021

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Union Coop had taken several measures to ensure the health and safety of its consumers. Union Coop management was very particular about sterilizing the shopping carts with water, soap and permitted sterilizing substances, as well as implementing the initiative of sterilization of the handles of shopping carts and insulating them to ensure the safety and health of the visitors. Additionally, we had dedicated staff in branches to ensure the cleanliness of trolleys and carts before and after consumer use. Furthermore, we had installed sanitization pods in different areas of Union Coop branches for consumers and shoppers to sanitize their hands continuously free of cost, as a part of our precautionary measures to provide additional protection to consumers while shopping. With the use of DM approved cleaning chemicals; we disinfectant food contact facilities at frequent intervals based on deep cleaning procedures.  

We used different types of cleaning chemicals and professional floor scrubbing equipment, vacuum machines, etc. Food grade cleaning chemicals were used in fresh food counters based on a deep cleaning program, which covered info on - what to clean, how to clean, who cleans and cleaning schedule and who monitors and verifies the effectiveness of cleaning procedures.

New Year resolutions 

Our New Year resolution is to keep supporting the vision of our wise leadership and smart governance concerning the management of the Covid-19 pandemic situation, as we take consumer health &safety seriously. We were one of the first private entities to fully implement the measures recommended by the competent health authorities in Dubai and this year will see no difference as we only plan to take hygiene and infection control much more seriously.  

We will further promote the concept of ‘sustainable cleaning’, which is a regular activity for us because we as the largest Consumer Cooperative in the UAE belong to serve the community. Moreover, serving the community means reducing the burden on our valued consumers and providing them with a healthy shopping experience. We along with the third parties involved try to create a sustainable eco-system that ensures a clean shopping environment in all the branches. Therefore, it would be fit to assume that our business model is ‘beyond timeline’. 

Plans to achieve these resolutions

Already our Strategy, Innovation & Corporate Development department – ‘Training Section’ organizes timely training sessions for new as well as existing staff at frequent intervals. The training modules cover all necessary aspects to ensure staff is well versed with the latest machine operations and chemical safety standards of cleaning. The training sessions regarding new cleaning chemicals, procedures or equipment are offered by reputed agencies who specialize in the respective area.

Moreover, our training division arranges training sessions in food safety standards and hygiene practices as per the predefined schedules, considering the importance of cleaning and hygiene in food handling areas.

Jibi Thankachan, Specialist & Preventionist at King Saud Medical City, Riyadh

The hygiene best practices you undertook in 2021

• Providing clean handwashing facilities.
• Offering alcohol-based hand sanitisers with minimum 70% alcohol content, when regular facilities are not available. 
• When recommended by authorities, screening employees and visitors before they enter the building (i.e., using a questionnaire or other measures). Do not allow an individual into the building if they screen positive.
• Providing boxes of tissues and encouraging their use.
• Providing disinfectant wipes, especially for use in common areas and at personal workstations.
• Cleaning and disinfecting high touch surfaces on a schedule, such as doorknobs, handles, stair railings, bars, desks, phones, shared computers, elevator buttons, tables etc. High touch items and surfaces should be disinfected multiple times a day.
• Reminding staff to not share cups, glasses, dishes, and cutlery. Be sure dishes are washed in soap and water before being used by another person.
• Removing magazines and papers from waiting areas or common rooms (such as receptions, break rooms etc.).
• Encouraging the use of personal items like pens and other stationeries and not to share with anyone.
• Cleaning and disinfecting a person's workstation (or other surfaces they came in contact with) when they suspect or confirm they have an infection.
• Make sure ventilation systems are working properly, are maintained according to the manufacturer’s recommendation and are adjusted to provide the maximum air exchanges per hour.
• Washing hands after handling medical waste and other infectious items.
• When handling linen contaminated with secretions from persons thought to be or are sick, wash using detergent and dry items completely. Do not shake dirty laundry. Perform hand hygiene afterwards.
• Considering the creation of teams or crews (“cohorts”) of workers that will work together exclusively to reduce the spread of the virus.
• Limiting visitors. Rescheduling or limiting direct appointments and others where possible.
• Increase the distance between desks or workstations.
• Increase the number of times touch points and surfaces are cleaned.
• Avoid shaking hands or hugging.
• Encouraging visitors and patients to practice self-hygiene measures.
• Health education to ensure safe practices are followed.

New Year Resolutions In Improving HH and hygiene practices

Why do we make New Year’s resolutions in the first place? Well, as a society, we tend to like a certain amount of ceremony when it comes to taking on a challenge. We like fresh starts, clean slates, and setting high expectations. But for the resolution to persist past the pomp and circumstance, we need to be proactive. We need to have a way to fight the old habits from creeping back in. We need to set the stage for actively creating new habits.

Any change in behaviour, from exercising more to, say, washing your hands more, represents a personal struggle of transformation that does not happen easily. In today's situations, we'll look at some of the current research on making those resolutions last and apply them to the leading behavioural obstacle that results in healthcare-associated infections: Hand hygiene.

With handwashing in healthcare facilities, anyone can share their stories - and their data - of failed attempts at improving hand hygiene compliance. Let’s ask these to ourselves

Why does hand hygiene compliance start to go down as soon as an intervention program is over?

Why do regular hand washers at work tend to also be regular hand washers at home?

What's going on here?

It's a habit. in the case of hand hygiene, the healthcare workers who want to improve their compliance rates need to actively seek out cues to help them remember. They need to actively practice seeing the cue and washing their hands. They need to identify their current habits that interfere with compliance and actively avoid those triggers. For each person, the path may be different, but the need for a new habit is universal. One cue that seems to work more than others has been characterized as "peer pressure," but really comes down to having another healthcare worker present in the room. Perhaps the presence of the other healthcare worker proves to be an effective trigger to remember Of course, there are certainly physical and organizational obstacles that inhibit hand hygiene. Healthcare workers will continue to be pressed for time, hand sanitiser bottles will continue to sometimes be empty or unavailable, and we will continue to be humans who make mistakes. But the conscious effort to create new habits can get us a good way towards 100% compliance.

Prompt measures to improve the practices

Most, if not all identified factors can be addressed through specific interventions. As an example, the “high work intensity” factor, which leads to both a high number of hand hygiene opportunities and lack of time to perform it, can be overcome by providing alcohol-based hand rubs at the point of care (system change) and by educating healthcare workers to focus on really essential indications for hand hygiene that apply in five moments.

The common prompt measure to improve are:

Focusing on System change: Ensuring that the necessary infrastructure and products are in place to allow hand hygiene performance at the point of care. This includes two essential elements:

1) access to a safe, continuous water supply and the availability of soap and disposable towels

2) availability of effective and well-tolerated alcohol-based hand rub products at the point of care.

Providing extensive training/education: 

Provision of regular training to all healthcare workers to heighten awareness of microbial transmission through hands, to emphasize the importance of hand hygiene and its indications, and to demonstrate the correct procedures for hand rubbing and handwashing. Healthcare workers’ education can be achieved using regular presentations, e-learning modules, posters, focus groups, reflective discussion, videos, self-learning modules, practical demonstrations, feedback from assessment, buddy systems, or combinations of these and other methods. Knowledge evaluation is recommended to identify gaps and areas for continuous education.

Evaluation and feedback: 

Monitoring hand hygiene practices and infrastructure, together with related perceptions and knowledge among healthcare workers, while providing performance and feedback of results to staff. The gold standard for measuring hand hygiene compliance is direct observation of hand hygiene opportunities and actions; electronic monitoring of hand hygiene actions and evaluation of alcohol-based hand rub consumption can also be used as indirect methods and surrogate markers.

Reminders in the workplace: 

Placing reminders and prompts (posters, stickers, voice prompts, leaflets, gadgets, etc.) related to the importance of hand hygiene and the appropriate indications and procedures for its performance.

Providing Institutional safety climate: 

Creating an environment and a culture aware of patient safety issues with hand hygiene improvement is considered a high priority at all levels including:

1) active participation in hand hygiene improvement efforts at both the institutional and individual levels

2) awareness of individual and institutional capacity to change and improve (self-efficacy); partnership with patients and patient organizations (depending on cultural issues and resources available).

Mohamed Ziada, Executive Housekeeper, Fraser Suites Dubai

The hygiene best practices you undertook in 2021

Hygiene played a huge role in 2021 because of the raging pandemic. Everyone adhering to hygiene protocols for very important for us at Frasers Dubai. It was also important to use eco-friendly chemicals that were effective and same time environmentally friendly.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made us set new standards in hygiene and cleaning. It has also become imperative that we strictly adhere to these standards in our hotels when it comes to precaution cleaning and disinfection. Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be very challenging as we have had to implement a lot of precautions. Some of these include always using appropriate PPE such as masks and gloves, ensuring that all hand sanitizers are available in all public areas and floors for staff use, and ensuring that we implement room disinfection using appropriate disinfection chemicals.

Among other safety and precautionary measures, Frasers suites Dubai hotel adheres to the following employee hygiene measures: 

• Sufficient disinfection units have been provided in all general employee zones and work areas. Every hour our employees must wash their hands and use dis infectant.
• Our employees in housekeeping, cleaning services and other departments must work with masks and disposable gloves on.

However, employee hygiene alone does not curb the spread of Coronavirus. A hotel must do much more to keep things in check because the responsibility of the safety of the guest rests on our shoulders. Every single day, we aim to offer our guests a hygienic and sterile stay in our guest rooms.

• Our housekeeping employees use and frequently changed PPE especially when they are cleaning guest rooms.
• We have reduced the number of rooms per housekeeping staff. At the beginning of room cleaning, the rooms are first disinfected and aired out and the necessary hygiene and cleaning are carried out with the greatest care within the lines of our specified cleaning standards.
• D4 chemical disinfectants are used for disinfection. In particular, the door blades, taps, telephone receivers, TV remote controls for the air.
• Sheets and towels are changed every day.
• Bathroom amenities that are provided daily for our guests are thoroughly disinfected beforehand. In addition to the hygiene products, hand disinfectant is also included in this set.
• To ensure the guest room is safe and disinfected, our team will do the disinfection using D4 chemical to all the areas after the guest checks out.
• After cleaning, our rooms are aired out thoroughly for 1 hour.

New Year resolutions

Our biggest resolution in 2022 is to clean with zero chemicals. We plan to achieve this by using hot steam pressure machines. Hot steam will kill all germs and viruses in less time. The hot steam can be used to remove stains in all furniture, mattress cleaning, curtains cleaning, even all kitchen equipment’s and rooms floors as well.

Using zero chemicals will protect all fabric and increase the longevity of carpets.