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We all learn from a young age that washing your hands is important. From stopping the spread of germs to general hygiene practices, maintaining hand hygiene protects yourself and others from catching infectious diseases.
This is why the World Health Organisation (WHO) formed World Hand Hygiene Day – to educate people worldwide about the importance of hand hygiene, particularly in healthcare settings. Learn more about World Hand Hygiene Day in this guide and why hand hygiene is crucial to stop the spread of germs.
Launched in 2009, World Hand Hygiene Day was created as an extension of a different campaign: the “WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge: Clean Care is Safer Care Work”. World Hand Hygiene Day is held every year on the 5th May and focuses on the importance of hand hygiene in healthcare settings, empowering health and care workers to maintain hand hygiene to stop the spread of infectious diseases.
The campaign aims to educate health and care workers on how and when to wash their hands and provide the right training to ensure hand hygiene is being maintained in all healthcare settings. Resources such as posters and educational tools are available to all healthcare facilities to ensure everyone across the globe has access to high-quality learning materials that detail how to wash your hands effectively.
The theme of this year’s Hand Hygiene Day is “Why is sharing knowledge about hand hygiene still so important? Because it helps stop the spread of harmful germs in healthcare”. By having a day dedicated to hand hygiene in healthcare, healthcare acquired infections (HAI) can be managed easily, and infections can be prevented from spreading.
You can find more information about World Hand Hygiene Day 2024 on the WHO website.
Hand hygiene is one of the best ways to stop the spread of infection. Infections are known to spread via modes of transmission in the chain of infection. This can be through infectious droplets contaminating surfaces or from person to person.
For example, touching a contaminated surface can spread germs to your hands. You might then touch other surfaces that will spread these infectious droplets, or you might touch your face, which exposes you to the harmful infection. Hand hygiene is an effective way of breaking this chain of infection as it removes any infectious droplets from entering your body.
In terms of a healthcare setting, healthcare facilities can be hubs for infectious diseases or HAI. These infectious agents could be spread from patient to patient via healthcare workers if they do not wash their hands properly.
The WHO has created an informational poster on when to wash your hands to ensure healthcare workers follow proper hand hygiene procedures.
Whether you are a healthcare worker or not, it is important that everyone understands when and how to wash their hands to maintain good hand hygiene and stop the spread of infections. According to the poster created by WHO, there are 12 steps to washing your hands.
For a more detailed guide on how to wash your hands properly, take a look at the WHO poster.
At Home Health, we want to show our support for World Hand Hygiene Day by raising awareness of hand hygiene and the importance of hand washing. By understanding the reasoning behind washing your hands, it is easier to make it seem less of a chore and more of a need.
Take a look at our hand hygiene products to ensure you have everything you need to ensure you are maintaining good hand hygiene this World Hand Hygiene Day.
You should wash your hands for a minimum of 20 seconds. 20 seconds is enough time to perform the whole hand washing routine thoroughly, ensuring you have effectively removed germs from your hands.
The WHO has created a series of steps you should follow when washing your hands. This 12-step process includes:
Depending on where you are, different ways of drying your hands may be available to you. For example, most public washrooms have air hand dryers of some form. These hand dryers work by blowing air across your hands to effectively dry them.
You may even have paper towels available to dry your hands with. You won’t have to worry about recontamination as long as you thoroughly dry your hands.
Hand sanitiser is a great option for on-the-go use when you might not have access to hand washing facilities. Simply put some hand sanitiser on your hands, and they will be free from germs.
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