Hand Hygiene

Background: Health care-associated infection affects hundreds of millions of people each year and is a major, global issue for patient safety.

Objective: The prevention of health care-associated infection was chosen by WHO Patient Safety as the theme of its First Global Patient Safety Challenge “Clean Care is Safer Care” launched in October 2005.

Methods: Since then, a formal statement has been signed by over 120 ministries of health as a pledge of their support to implement actions to reduce health care-associated infection, corresponding to more than 85% coverage of the world population. The Challenge has focused on raising global awareness of the importance of heath care-associated infection as a priority patient safety issue with the promotion of hand hygiene as the cornerstone.
Results: The main output of the Challenge has been the development of evidence-based guidelines for hand hygiene improvement in health care and the design of an implementation strategy to translate the guidelines into practice. The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care and the implementation strategy have been tested in eight pilot sites and used in more than 350 healthcare settings worldwide with very promising results. To date, over 40 countries have also established hand hygiene promotion campaigns at national level. To sustain the momentum, the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands initiative was launched by WHO Patient Safety on 5 May 2009, simultaneous to the publication of the finalized WHO Guidelines, to encourage health-care workers to be part of a global movement to improve and, more importantly, sustain hand hygiene. Since the start of 2009, more than 5500 health-care facilities have registered their commitment to the initiative with a target to achieve 10,000 registrations by 5 May 2010.

Conclusions: The ultimate aim of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is to demonstrate that hand hygiene is the essential basis for the reduction of health care-associated infection.