World Hand Hygiene Day - 5th May

As part of a major global effort to improve hand hygiene in health care, the World Health Organisation launched the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands annual campaign in 2009.  This all-important initiative aims to maintain a global profile of the importance of hand hygiene in healthcare and to 'bring people together' in support of improvement globally.

In this 18th year of the campaign, WHO calls on all those providing and supporting health care to refresh their plans and actions on hand hygiene and IPC to ensure patient and health worker safety. 

To help promote the important message about hand hygiene in healthcare, we have created some new resources that support this year's World Hand Hygiene Day message, 'Action saves lives' by highlighting the often-forgotten role that skin integrity and nail care have on hand hygiene.  These resources can be downloaded and printed in colour or black and white, in A5, A4 or A3 size. 

And for the younger patients in your care, there are some fun colouring-in pages and puzzles featuring the MICROSHIELD® Superheroes to help them learn about the importance of CLEAN HANDS. 

This year, the WHO has released 2 main campaign posters, which can be downloaded here.  These posters are also available in several other languages, including Arabic and Chinese, and can be accessed directly from the WHO International website. WHO World Hand Hygiene Day Campaign