5 May: Global Hand Hygiene Day

Each year the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign of the WHO aims to progress the goal of maintaining a global profile on the importance of hand hygiene in health care and to ‘bring people together’ in support of hand hygiene improvement globally. 

WHO calls on everyone to be inspired by the global movement to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), i.e. achieving better health and well-being for all people at all ages, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. Infection Prevention and Control, including hand hygiene, is critical to achieve UHC as it is a practical and evidence-based approach with demonstrated impact on quality of care and patient safety across all levels of the health system. 

With that, we invite you to be part of this global movement and spread the message to improve infection prevention practices around the globe.

How you can contribute to the global movement:

• Use the posters / sticker below and spread them out in your institution
• Organise events such as Hand Hygiene Trainings
• Post your commitment as a picture on social media on 5th May with any of the posters below. Use the official tags: #HandHygiene #CleanYourHands #InfectionPrevention