“Clean Care for All – It’s in Your Hands”: the May 5, 2019 World Health Organization “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” Campaign
Peer review under responsibility of the Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Services Group Company
- DOI
- 10.2991/dsahmj.k.190318.001How to use a DOI?
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- © 2019 Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Group. Publishing services by Atlantis Press International B.V.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Quality healthcare should be available to everyone. The World Health Organization (WHO) concept of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) [1] embodies the urgent need for access to healthcare for all people around the world. In addition to access, the concept of UHC incorporates the critical element of the necessary quality of delivered healthcare services. Infection Prevention and Control (IPC), with hand hygiene as the most effective measure, is a practical and evidence-based approach with demonstrated impact on quality of care and patient safety across all levels of the health system.
Each year, the WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign aims to bring people together, on or around May 5, in support of hand hygiene improvement globally [2]. This year, the theme for global annual hand hygiene day reflects a strong focus on providing clean care, equally protecting all patients and healthcare workers from infection and antimicrobial resistance transmission, across all countries, including in low-resource settings.
World Health Organization urges ministries of health, health facility leaders, IPC leaders, health workers, and patient advocacy groups to contribute to effective IPC action, including hand hygiene, as a cornerstone of quality in healthcare Table 1. WHO invites all healthcare facilities to join the “2019 WHO Global Survey on Infection Prevention and Control and Hand Hygiene” by using two validated assessment tools; one for evaluating the core components of IPC programmes and the other for a deeper analysis of hand hygiene activities [3].
| Campaign participants | Call to action |
|---|---|
| Health workers | Champion clean care – it’s in your hands. |
| IPC leaders | Monitor infection prevention and control standards – take action and improve practices. |
| Health facility leaders | Is your facility up to WHO infection control and hand hygiene standards? Take part in the WHO survey 2019 and take action! |
| Ministries of health | Does your country meet infection prevention and control standards? Monitor and act to achieve quality universal health coverage. |
| Patient advocacy groups | Ask for clean care – it’s your right. |
IPC, infection prevention and control.
May 5, 2019, WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign calls to action
On a facility level, the use of these tools gives institutions a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their IPC and hand hygiene programmes, and provides concrete actions to address existing gaps. These tools allow institutions to improve their IPC practices and policies in a concrete and measurable way, at their own speed and in their own context. The surveys are anonymous, and global results will be made available only using aggregated data. This means that facilities and ministries of health can commit fully to work on improving IPC and patient safety without fear of scrutiny or possible negative repercussions.
Globally, this survey will allow WHO to provide a situational analysis on the level of progress of current IPC and hand hygiene activities around the world and inform future efforts and resource use for IPC capacity building and improvement. Global surveys using the “Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework” were already conducted in 2011 and 2015 [4–6], making the current survey even more crucial for tracking the implementation of hand hygiene and IPC on a global scale Figure 1.
May 5, 2019: “Clean care for all – it’s in your hands”! The May 5, 2019, WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign slogan and main promotional image (2019 hashtags: #HandHygiene #InfectionPrevention #HealthForAll). Campaign participants are invited to submit photos or selfies of them holding a board with the slogan and hashtags at www.CleanHandsSaveLives.org
Each improvement in IPC contributes toward quality UHC. “Clean care for all – it’s in your hands”!
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Didier Pittet works with WHO in the context of the WHO initiative “Private Organizations for Patient Safety – Hand Hygiene”. The aim of this WHO initiative is to harness industry strengths to align and improve implementation of WHO recommendations for hand hygiene in healthcare in different parts of the world, including in least-developed countries. In this instance, companies/industry with a focus on advancement related to hand hygiene and infection control have the specific aim of improving access to affordable hand hygiene products, as well as through education and research. All listed authors declare no financial support, grants, financial interests or consultancy that could lead to conflicts of interest.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland, and the Infection Control Programme and WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety (SPCI/WCC), University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland; hand hygiene research activities at the SPCI/WCC are also supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 32003B_163262). The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this article and they do not necessarily represent the views, decisions or policies of the institutions with which they are affiliated. WHO takes no responsibility for the information provided or the views expressed in this paper.
REFERENCES
Cite this article
TY - JOUR AU - Alexandra Peters AU - Tcheun Borzykowski AU - Ermira Tartari AU - Claire Kilpatrick AU - Safiah Hwai Chuen Mai AU - Benedetta Allegranzi AU - Didier Pittet PY - 2019 DA - 2019/03/28 TI - “Clean Care for All – It’s in Your Hands”: the May 5, 2019 World Health Organization “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” Campaign JO - Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Journal SP - 21 EP - 22 VL - 1 IS - 1-2 SN - 2590-3349 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/dsahmj.k.190318.001 DO - 10.2991/dsahmj.k.190318.001 ID - Peters2019 ER -