Clean hands for all

It's good to shine a light on certain important interventions such as hand hygiene in healthcare, and this is why such days exist. WHO, with its May 5 annual campaign on hand hygiene in health care https://www.who.int/infection-prevention/campaigns/clean-hands/en/, and this complementary Global Handwashing day campaign. Both can and should work in synergy - and this is part of sustaining improvement. It's no accident that both campaigns occur in the months they do - May 5th (representing the 5 digits on a hand and reinforcing the 5 Moments) and October (tenth month, ten digits). Together, at the very least, we have a global focus on the fact that hand hygiene in healthcare and beyond remains a [patient safety] problem, not yet solved and that this focus occurs every six months can only be a good thing. Important not to overlook that from a patient safety perspective hand hygiene could be described as a modifiable behavioural risk factor for the development of a devastating and fatal healthcare associated infection. Finally, many people choose to use edutainment to promote better adherence with recommended hand hygiene. This paper that I prepared earlier with colleagues here and in Australia may be of interest to those considering developing their own edutainment approaches: https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(18)30575-3/abstract