NRIC highlights WHO "SAVE LIVES: Clean your hands" - 5th May 2010

The consequences of not practicing hand hygiene in the health-care setting, whether it is in an acute or community setting or in a patient's home, can be potentially very serious – evidence proves that hand hygiene at the point of care saves patients' lives.

The World Health Organisation
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.

National Resource for Infection Control
NRIC is a project developed by healthcare professionals, aimed at being a single-access point to existing resources within infection control for infection prevention professionals and all other healthcare staff.

"On 5 May 2010, the World Health Organization in their SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands annual initiative activities, will again issue a global call to action inviting health-care workers, facilities and organizations throughout the world to actively campaign for improved hand hygiene at the point of care to reduce health care-associated infections and to demonstrate their commitment to this priority global movement."

Every year on 5th May, WHO Patient Safety will be bringing people together, no matter where they are, by celebrating the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands initiative and encouraging ongoing action at the point of patient care - making hand hygiene not just a priority but a precondition.

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands - 5 May 2010; the countdown has started.

WHO 'My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene' approach defines the key moments when health-care workers should perform hand hygiene. The web directory contains information on a multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy including:

• My 5 moments for Hand Hygiene
• WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care (2009)
• Hand Hygiene posters and leaflets
• 'My 5 moments for hand hygiene': a user-centred design approach to understand, train, monitor and report hand hygiene WHO: Tools for training and education

"Clean Care is Safer Care" The First Global Patient Safety Challenge Factsheet World Health Organization (WHO) 01/05/2009 Clean Care is Safer Care