The World Health Organisation had launched this campaign in the year 2009 to create awareness about the benefits of improved hand hygiene.

The World Hand Hygiene Day is being observed today. The day aims to create awareness among the general public about the importance of hand hygiene. This year`s theme of the day is, ‘Save lives - clean your hands’.  It also focuses to improve hand hygiene in the health care sector, where the cleanliness of hands is often credited with saving more lives than most medical breakthroughs. The day galvanise care providers worldwide and to acknowledge hand hygiene and other relevant infection control techniques as essential for patient safety.

The World Health Organisation had launched this campaign in the year 2009 to create awareness about the benefits of improved hand hygiene. The simple task of washing hands is a potential lifesaver—and to put this point across, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will observe May 5 as the World Hand Hygiene Day. The campaign was launched by WHO in 2009 to create awareness about the benefits of improved hand hygiene.

On Hand Hygiene Day (5 May), more than 15 000 health-care facilities from 156 countries are participating in the WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands Initiative by committing to improve patient safety by practicing better hand hygiene. This commitment means that almost 10 million health-care workers are aiming to implement hand hygiene best practices, such as cleansing hands in specific moments during patient care. These steps help to combat the often hidden but persistent public health hazard of health care-associated infections.

Many of the germs causing these infections are transferred by hands when health-care providers or visitors are touching the patient while providing assistance. Using proper hand hygiene to keep hands clean is critical to reducing the risk of health care-associated infections in patients. The most common infections are urinary tract and surgical site infections, pneumonia and infections of the bloodstream.