May 5th is the World Hand Hygiene Day, established to raise awareness among people and operators about the prevention of infectious diseases and the maintenance of good health. On the occasion of Hand Hygiene Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated the 2023 message “Save lives: clean your hands” (Save lives: sanitize your hands), to maintain high attention on hand hygiene, especially in assistance and care environments, but also in the community. It is a simple, low-cost procedure that, if performed correctly, effectively prevents the transmission of many infectious diseases.
WHO campaign
The WHO theme of campaign for World Hand Hygiene Day 2024 is the following: “Why is it so important for us to remember to wash our hands?” Because it helps stop the spread of dangerous germs in care and treatment environments.”
Campaign objectives:
strengthen and empower healthcare actors to enhance actions to improve hand hygiene and infection prevention and control at the point of care promote collaboration of the population and organizations towards the common goal of minimizing the risk of infections and antimicrobial resistance in healthcare.
Many countries are demonstrating strong commitment and progress in strengthening infection prevention and control strategies and actions (Infection Prevention and Control – IPC) but overall progress is slow and insufficient. In 2021, only four out of 106 countries (3.8%) had all the minimum CPI requirements at the national level. In numerous WHO surveys, training and education have been the weakest components of IPC programs worldwide, both at country and facility levels. This is reflected in the lack of standardized IPC curricula for pre-graduate courses (e.g. medicine, nursing and midwifery), and postgraduate specialist training, leading to inconsistent delivery of IPC training and a lack of experts and career paths for IPC professionals.
That’s why World Hand Hygiene Day focuses on promoting the knowledge and capacity building of health and care workers through innovative and impactful training and education on infection prevention and control, including hand hygiene.
The 2024 campaign coincides with the need for countries to rapidly consider implementing the first-ever global CPI strategy adopted by all countries in 2023 and supported by a forthcoming global action plan and monitoring framework , which includes a key strategic direction related to IPC education and training.
WHO invites all IPC professionals, healthcare workers and policy makers, together with citizens, to participate in activities and celebrations for World Hand Hygiene Day 2024, sharing knowledge of why hygiene of the hands is still important, because it helps stop the spread of potentially pathogenic germs, especially in the healthcare sector.
WHO initiatives and materials web banners translated into the official languages of the United Nations short video in English
and webinar global in English, the 6 maggio WHO Infection Prevention and Control Global Webinar (from 2pm to 3.30pm CET) to: provide perspectives and evidence on the value of IPC and hand hygiene education outline WHHD 2024 resources and activities present the best stories on this topic submitted to WHO present an overview of WHO resources on IPC present the WHO video game “My 5 moments: the game”. Through social media the campaign is promoted with the hashtags: #handhygiene #infectionprevention #cleanhands. What the Ministry does
For the 2024 campaign, the Ministry of Health offers healthcare workers a collection of courses dedicated to IPC practices. Each course is available in several languages.
It also disseminates information and messages through social channels, to encourage citizens to practice correct hand washing.
Initiatives of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità
For the occasion, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) is making available to operators and the general population a banner and a poster about the day translated into Italian:
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