WHO commemorates Hand Hygiene day

By Lerato Ndlovu

The world today commemorated World Hand Hygiene day, which holds a lot of significance during the COVID 19 pandemic.

World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared 2021 the “Year of the Health and Care Worker” basing on the need to practise hand hygiene and prevent infections during care delivery.

This year’s theme is “achieving hand hygiene at the point of care” with the slogan “seconds save lives- clean your hands”.

“This is a serious challenge at any time, but COVID-19 has dramatically demonstrated just how important good hand hygiene practices are in reducing the risk of transmission, when used as part of a comprehensive package of preventative measures.

“It is also vital in preventing any infections acquired in health care, infection acquired during health care delivery is a major global health problem, but patients in low- and middle-income countries are twice as likely to experience this as patients in high-income countries (15% and 7% of patients respectively); the risk in intensive care units (ICU), especially among newborns, is between 2 and 20 times higher.

“One reason for this is that in some low-income countries only 1 in 10 health workers practises proper hand hygiene while caring for patients at high risk of health care-associated infections in ICU – often because they simply do not have the facilities to do so,” WHO said.

According to WHO the campaign objective of the day is to highlight the role of achieving effective hand hygiene at the point of care and ensuring that policy makers also invest in ensuring hand hygiene is available for all.

“Countries and facilities around the world do not have equal opportunities to put in place the appropriate systems and the right practices to avoid suffering from these infections, but hand hygiene can be of great assistance and also can help curb the spread of viruses”.

The global health organisation urged everyone to make cleaning hands a habit as it helps protect from viruses and bacterias as the spreading of micro organisms and viruses is mostly through hands.

Health care acquired infections affect millions of patients and health workers worldwide every year.

“Half these infections can be avoided by implementing effective Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) practices and programmes, including hand hygiene improvement strategies.

“Investing in effective IPC strategies can also yield significant financial returns. Implementation of hand hygiene policies can generate economic savings averaging 16 times the cost of their implementation.”

Looking at the current crisis, the organisation stated that washing hands properly is also an effective way of preventing the spread of the corona virus.

WHO called on health care workers and facilities to achieve effective hand hygiene action at the point of care.

The day was launched in 2009 and is commemorated annually on the 5th of May.