World Hand Hygiene Day

From respiratory infections to foodborne illnesses, many sicknesses could be avoided if everyone practiced proper handwashing techniques. On average, you come into contact with 300 surfaces every 30 minutes, exposing you to 840,000 germs. Only 20% of people wash their hands before preparing food, and 39% before eating food.

The SAVE LIVES (who.int): Clean Your Hands global campaign, launched in 2009 and celebrated annually on 5 May (World Hand Hygiene Day) aims to maintain global promotion, visibility and sustainability of hand hygiene in health care and to ‘bring people together’ in support of hand hygiene improvement around the world.

This year's theme for World Hand Hygiene Day, 5 May 2022, is focused on recognizing that we can add to a facility's climate or culture of safety and quality through cleaning our hands but also that a strong quality and safety culture will encourage people to clean hands at the right times and with the right products. Damp hands are 1,000x more likely to spread bacteria than dry hands. Only about 20% of people dry their hands after washing them.