To prevent the spread of germs and infections, keeping your hands clean and hygienic is the most important thing that you can do. It is particularly crucial to practise stringent hand hygiene in healthcare environments, and it’s for this reason that the World Health Organisation (WHO) holds its ‘SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands’ global campaign day each year on 5th May to raise awareness of proper hand hygiene for health workers, which WHO says has saved millions of lives in the last few years.
This theme for the 2015 campaign is ‘Strengthening health care systems and delivery – hand hygiene is your entrance door’, reinforcing that a safe healthcare environment is quite literally at your fingertips. It’s also very timely in the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak, as the virus was spread through human-to-human contact with bodily fluids, and proper hand washing was critical for infection control in the areas affected.
Ebola was less of a concern for us in the UK but it is always helpful to be reminded of the necessity of good hand hygiene habits, no matter which environment you work in. As part of the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands 2015 campaign, WHO dispels information not only about the importance of hand hygiene but also how to properly clean your hands, and with the correct sanitising products.
Should you handrub or handwash?
There are two different ways to clean your hands: handrubbing, using an alcohol-based hand sanitiser, or handwashing, with an antibacterial soap and water. Both of these are effective methods of cleaning your hands, but according to WHO guidelines, there are different times when each is more appropriate.
Handwashing should be used when your hands are visibly dirty or soiled, when you have come into contact with any bodily fluids, and after using the toilet. At almost every other time, thorough handrubbing is adequate to sanitise your hands and ensure that you are contributing to a safe and clean environment. It’s also faster and therefore more effective overall for controlling the spread of germs and infections.
If you work in a healthcare environment, why not test your knowledge of WHO guidelines on hand hygiene in health care, and on hand hygiene overall by taking the tricky quiz below? Challenge your co-workers to take the quiz too and find out whether you’re hand hygiene experts, or your knowledge of hand cleaning would get a ‘thumbs down’!
There are many different ways that you can get involved in the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign on 5th May, whether it’s simply putting up hand hygiene information posters around your workplace, giving your team their own bottles of hand sanitising gel, or even organising a hand sanitising relay! However you participate, be sure to share your efforts with the world by tweeting at @WHO and using the hashtags #safeHANDS and #handhygiene. And to make your hand washing efforts even more pleasant, we have five fantastic gift bags from luxury skin care brand, Pasture Naturals, to give away! Their range of premium, eco-friendly anti-bacterial cleansers, washes and lotions contain very high levels of natural essences and vitamins that nourish and refresh, plus each product is free from parabens, and made right here in the UK.
To be in with a chance of winning one of these fabulous gift bags filled with products for your washroom of choice, enter via the app below. And don’t forget to tell us about your activities for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands on 5th May by leaving us a comment!