Clean Care is Safer Care

We are driving patient safety by supporting WHO’s ‘Clean Care is Safer Care’

WHO’s Invitation to Participate - 5 May 2011

WHO Clean Care is Safer Care programme is again promoting its global annual hand hygiene campaign; WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands

If you want to improve and sustain hand hygiene and help save lives by reducing health care-associated infection while workingin your health-care facility, register with WHO now if you haven’t already

Action for sustained hand hygiene

Tracking your progress, planning your actions and aiming for hand hygiene sustainability are the goals for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands 5 May 201. Using the WHO Hand Hygiene Self Assessment Framework can help you do this- knowing where your health-care facility stands on hand hygiene promotion and sustainability is an essential part of a successful programme or campaign.

You can be part of this growing global movement by:

Acting on WHO messages and information www.who.int/gpsc
Planning your own 5 May activities, including undertaking self-assessments
Highlighting 5 May 2011 actions in your area, e.g. create dedicated web pages or notice boards to share activities and successes
Joining WHO's 2011 teleclass series including a special focus on hand hygiene on 5 May 2011 by Professor Didier Pittet
Encouraging others to register and take action to improve and sustain hand hygiene.

Help spread the hand hygiene message

All information can be found at:

http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/en/index.html

Download the guide to implementation of the WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy

Download the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care

Download the WHO Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework

Download tools and resources

Further information

The World Health Organization (WHO) Patient Safety First Global Patient Safety Challenge, ‘Clean Care is Safer Care’ programme, aimed at reducing Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) worldwide, was launched in October 2005. The clear and central feature of ‘Clean Care is Safer Care’ has been to target efforts on the importance of clean hands in health care. As of July 2010, 124 Ministers of Health have pledged commitment to reducing HCAI and to support the work of WHO. Over 40 countries and areas have also started hand hygiene campaigns during this time.

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, launched in 2009, aims to galvanise hand hygiene action at the point of patient care, and is part of the ‘Clean Care is Safer Care’ programme. The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health-care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way to help reduce the spread of potentially life-threatening infections in health-care facilities.

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands incorporates a global annual day (05 May 2011) to focus on the importance of improving hand hygiene in health care with WHO providing support for these efforts. The Health Information and Quality Authority (the Authority) is fully committed to supporting the ongoing international and national drive for safer care by contributing to the reduction of HCAIs, including better hand-hygiene practices and publishing the findings of our monitoring. We will continue to support the WHO’s Global Patient Safety Challenge.

WHO have created a suite of evidence based hand hygiene improvement tools and materials. These tools have been field-tested and have yielded new, interesting data on hand hygiene practices and success factors for improvement.

WHO encourages health-care facilities to start with the Guide to implementation of the WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy. This is a key tool that provides comprehensive advice on how to develop an effective action plan and how to use the other tools.