To save yourself from superbug infections, wash your hands, Hong Kong hygiene expert says

Wash your hands. It’s as easy as that when it comes to keeping superbugs at bay in hospitals.

Improved hand hygiene helped the private Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital to sharply reduce the spread of superbugs, according to Dr Raymond Yung Wai-hung, its deputy medical superintendent for quality and safety.

Calling himself “a walking reminder”, he wears a hand hygiene button on his hospital coat lapel and goes through the hospital in Happy Valley daily “to make sure everyone does their thing”.

At the entrance to its 38-floor Li Shu Pui Block, visitors cannot miss the life-sized posters bearing the message: “It’s in your hands: prevent sepsis in health care.” Other signs urge them to “say yes” to hand hygiene by making use of the six bottles of alcohol disinfectant.

Among Sanatorium staff, handwashing is now so routine it is second nature to everyone. But Yung is not stopping there.

“This year, we are asking patients to be their own advocate,” he said. “The patients themselves take the initiative to ask the doctors and the nurses, ‘have you washed your hands before you touch me?’”

Sanatorium, one of 12 private hospitals in Hong Kong, has seen superbug infections fall in recent years, but did not give specific figures.From 2013 to 2017, there were only two outbreaks of superbugs in the private hospital sector, the Centre for Health Protection said. The one instance in 2014 was at Union Hospital and involved 18 patients, and the other was at St Teresa’s Hospital the following year, involving nine patients.