NABH has started the NABH-Safe-I Certification programme for infection control in association with BD India (Becton, Dickinson & Co.). The programme, so far confined to Kerala and Punjab, will now go national.
Under this programme, NABH recommends safe injection and infusion practices, biomedical waste management, healthcare workers safety and sterilisation and disinfection, to name a few. NABH also provides a consultant through its technical partner – BD to help applicants build capability to run a robust infection control programme, providing training content and surveillance tools, as well as conducting a baseline and an end-line assessment post the training, basis which the applicant hospital knows when it’s ready to invite NABH assessors.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr K K Kalra, CEO, National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH) said, “NABH is currently operating in India with nearly 864 hospitals in various phases of accreditation and 156 large hospitals are already accredited. There is a need for increased awareness among the healthcare facilities across India so that more healthcare organisations start participating in quality initiatives. There is a role for all the concerned stakeholders towards raising awareness and involving healthcare organisations to adopt quality standards.”
The first hospital to get the certification, Tagore Hospital of Jalandhar, Punjab is one of the 21 hospitals undergoing the NABH-Safe-I accreditation programme from Punjab and Kerala, the two states under the pilot started in March 2012.
Dr Narottam Puri, Chairman, NABH said, “NABH is the hallmark of quality of care in hospitals in India. I am glad that hospitals are realising the importance of getting NABH accreditation and have started working towards it. I congratulate Tagore Hospital for beginning their journey of providing quality healthcare in their state.”
Manoj Gopalakrishna, Managing Director, BD India said, “BD has always worked toward achieving our purpose of ‘Helping all people live healthy lives’. The NABH-Safe-I certification is an innovative collaboration for enhancing patient safety and healthcare worker safety and will augment infection control standards in the hospitals of India.”
NABH and BD had entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in 2012 to support hospitals in attaining quality-of-care standards for infection control in three phases. During Phase One, initial workshops were to be carried out across hospitals in India to ensure adoption of ‘Safe-I’ by hospitals. The second phase will offer Centers of Excellence (CoE) and health economic models to be developed for the benefit of Indian healthcare after dissemination of NABH-Safe-I programme. The last phase will augment national capability of standards dissemination by developing additional Centres of Excellence.
EH News Bureau
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