SAVES LIVES: Clean Your Hands 5 May

Saraya Nurses and Midwives Clean Care Is In Your Hands Poster

Seconds save lives. WHO calls on health care facilities to achieve effective hand hygiene action at the point of care, where the patient, health care worker, and care or treatment with contact is involved. With every second counting in order to minimize transmissions, hand hygiene should be performed when it is needed (5 moments of hand hygiene) and in the most effective way, by using the right technique with readily available products, as explained on our healthcare solutions page.

In 2021, and under the slogan “Seconds save lives - clean your hands!”, the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands global campaign, launched in 2009 and celebrated on the 5th of May (World Hand Hygiene Day), has as objective to highlight the role of health care workers, IPC practitioners, faculty managers, policy makers, patients, families and vaccinators in achieving effective hand hygiene action at the point of care, while supporting the implementation of the WHO 2020 recommendation for universal hand hygiene and the WHO/UNICEF Hand Hygiene for All initiative in health care facilities.

Let’s promote the importance of hand hygiene in health care and bring people together in support of globally improving hand hygiene.

Join the campaign!

Are you part of a hospital or healthcare-care facility wanting to improve infection control? Is this the first time you will participate in the Clean Hands campaign? If so, subscribe here!

Join Hospitals and health-care facilities throughout the world in raising hand hygiene awareness, moving action to the point of care, and reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAI) by:

Being a part of a global movement to improve hand hygiene; receive acknowledgment of this from WHO.
Joining a network of countries that have already committed to sustained hand hygiene campaigning.
Becoming one of the leaders helping to prevent HAI in your country; subsequently saving lives.
Getting support for moving from commitment to action at the point of patient care.
Having the opportunity to share your knowledge and successes with others.
And demonstrating your commitment to making patient safety THE No 1 priority.