WHO: Guidelines on hand hygiene

Summary

Advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) on hand hygiene for healthcare workers.

Content

My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene

The My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene approach defines the key moments when healthcare workers should perform hand hygiene.

This evidence-based, field-tested, user-centred approach is designed to be easy to learn, logical and applicable in a wide range of settings. This approach recommends health-care workers to clean their hands:

• before touching a patient,
• before clean/aseptic procedures,
• after body fluid exposure/risk,
• after touching a patient, and
• after touching patient surroundings.