The Hand Hygiene Initiative is a grassroots initiative targeted at establishing consistent and effective handwashing that has the potential to profoundly disrupt the cycle of transmission that feeds the spread of deadly diseases in Haiti. NECH-CIEH nurses have conducted a research study of handwashing in twelve of the major hospitals in all ten of the country’s geographic departments, in collaboration with the Director of Nursing Care at the Ministry of Health.
The findings are informing the sustainable handwashing training in Haitian hospitals and communities developed and delivered by Haitian nurses. Nurses throughout the country are not only learning research methodology and conducting clinical studies, but critically, they are also learning to become respected opinion leaders in their own communities and in their medical profession; doctors start to understand that through collaboration with highly educated and well-trained nurses, they can work more efficiently and effective and deliver increasingly better healthcare. The results were presented by NECH-CIEH nurses at the 2016 international conference of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in San Francisco.