The National Infection Preventions

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

According to "Australian Guidelines For The Prevention and Control of infection in Healthcare" (Australian government, 2010) that published by Australian Government in 2010, the national infection prevention and control framework mainly focuses on three big parts:

"Part A-Basics Of Infection Prevention And Control

Part B-Standard and Transmission-Based Precautions

Part C-Organisational Support" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010)

More specifically, Part A consists of "Infection prevention and control in the healthcare setting" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010, p.17), risk management and A patient-centred approach; Part B is composed of Standard precautions, Transmission-based precautions, Management of multi-resistant organisms and outbreak situation, "Applying standard and transmission-based precautions during procedures" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010, p.133), and also Supplementary information, such as EPP, which is Exposure prone procedures; Part C includes Management and clinical governance, Staff health and safety, Education and training, Healthcare-associated infection surveillance, Antibiotic stewardship, "Influence of facility design on healthcare-associated infection" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010, p.231), Facility design (Australian government NHMRC, 2010).

The guidelines give us a lot of useful advices about how to implement infection prevention and control, not only for healthcare facility, but also suitable for individual as educational resource, such as how to perform hand hygiene including using disinfectant to clean the environment and so on. All the information that have been provided through government are aim at improving our quality of health care so that to give us a better living environment and better living quality. Moreover, it gives us meaningfully educational concepts that need to be understood deeply by everyone of us are "Healthcare-associated infection is preventable" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010, p.7) and "Infection prevention and control is everybody’s business" (Australian government NHMRC, 2010, p.7).

Many experts in this area and agencies have contributed their great effort and time to help accomplish this guideline with their professional spirits. They were mentioned in the former part of this guideline based on Acknowledgements of "Australian Guidelines For The Prevention and Control of infection in Healthcare" (Australian government, 2010):

"Infection Control Guidelines Steering Committee

NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council)—ICG Project Team, Canberra

Technical writers—Ampersand Health Science Writing

Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care" (Australian government, 2010).

Pandemic planning requirements: prevention; preparedness; response and recovery

"We are planning to have the capacity, capability and flexibility to respond to a pandemic as severe as the one that occurred in 1918" (Australian government the Department of Health and Ageing, 2008, p.16). We need to undertake some effective and efficient measures to get ready for responding to a pandemic, that is to say that we need a plan. People today travel globally and communicate frequently so as we get contact with each other, so some of the disease spread even more easily than before. We can’t predict when and how quickly the disease will spread here around our country. We can’t say how long it will last and how severe it will be. We can’t estimate the loss we may have not only in our individual life like health and safety, but also the influence or consequences in destroying our health system, worsening our economic and environment. Some contagious disease may impact healthy people moderately, but it may have severe or even irreversible influence on people who have some underlying health issues such as "respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders" (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.4), obesity, pregnant women and indigenous Australians (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.4) to put them at higher risk of damaging their health and into serious health condition.

Prevention and preparedness

We are required to observe closely on pandemic disease that may spread to Australia, estimate the potential risk of having the outbreak in public and "support containment activities from the outset" (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5);

Our government needs to make budget or investment on infection prevention and control;

Then we need to make sure what type of pandemic disease it will be and identify it. According to the disease we predict beforehand, such as seasonal disease-influnenza; we need to prepare correspondingly protective items and provide access of these kind of thing to public, such as mask for preventing air borne infection disease. What’s more, the indispensible pharmaceuticals (medicines);

Take most necessary actions to prevent, prepare, response and recovery during potential pandemic disease. (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5);

Draft new legislation to support the implementation of decision making (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5);

Government needs to support business and other fields that may have got great loss during that particular time. (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5)

Response

We need to try out best to decrease morbidity and mortality;

We need to ensure adequate medical service and analyse virulence itself and sort out how to treat or prevent, such as the development of certain vaccines;

We need to make public notice adequate knowledge and news and information about our actions that have been taken, the severity of the pandemic disease, the progress of disease condition and so on;

Maintain normal life, civil society, essential infrastructure and services. (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5)

Recovery

We should evaluate the possible consequences or loss from pandemic disease;

We should make certain measures to recover on people’s health conditions, not only physically, but also psychologically, economic, infrastructure recovery and so on, bringing the whole society back to normal; (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5)

We should learn from this lesson and conclude how to response and make a better plan for the next time spreading of pandemic disease;

(Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5);

We also should make efforts on helping our whole nation to recover the relationships with other countries from the influence during pandemic, especially those countries in Asia-Pacific region;

We should prepare enough for the further pandemic waves that may happen in the future. (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.5)

Key phases which may signal a need to change

During the preparedness phase, we need to increase our flexibility and adaptability (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2012, p.6) to make sure that we can enact certain kind of different strategies or plans according to the extent of pandemic, the time or season and so on;

Enhance collaboration in a global level, such as the development of vaccines, share the information (e.g. data) and communicate to improve together;

Value the importance of storage and delivery of medicines (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2012, p.7);

Enhance relevant amendments on new legislation to support the decision making during the response to pandemic. Make the whole decision making process transparent (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2012, p.7);

Prolong medical service time to give better health care during pandemic outbreaks, or also prolong medical related service time, such as 24/7 hotline service system on medical areas;

Training current health care students more flexibly and improve their practice and education frequently including updating their knowledge about it;

Expanding enrollment in Universities or colleges and such on this area under the help of government, such as implementing preferential policy on these student, give them priority of low-interest loan and so on in order to supplement the lacking of the health care workers right now;

Improve medical diagnosis level to accelerate identification of the new virus that have sustained around the world;

Improve the understanding of the virus to make more precise estimate of possible impact on our whole nation. (Council of Australian Governments, 2011, p.7)

Important lessons learned from past exposures

SARS as a potential pandemic in 2003 were poorly prepared by governments, scientists, health care experts world widely. The first scientific article weren’t published until the last wave of this pandemic disease (Flahault, 2010);

Unlike SARS, influenza A, which is H1N1 that happened in May of 2009 was fully prepared and in an advanced level (Flahault, 2010). However, the statistics of how many cases are symptomatic and asymptomatic globally were unclear, let alone the accuracy, due to some reasons such as the one that some countries even stop counting, which indirectly lead to a conse thequence that besides developed countries and some industrialized countries whose vaccine productions were in time by October of 2009, those developing countries were ended up with the needs for vaccines unsolved (Flahault, 2010).

Future directions for infection prevention and control

In the future, our diagnosis level will be advanced so that we can identify e.g. the virus or virus subtype more quickly and accurately (Flahault, 2010);

The capability of rapid vaccine production will be improved not only in developed countries, but also those developing countries with sharing of more transparent and precise information including scientific studies on identifying, developing and manufacturing vaccines (Flahault, 2010);

Value the subtype of former virus;

Enhance international cooperation under the assistance and supervise of WHO.