World Hand Hygiene Day 2017 – May 05, 2017
World Hand Hygiene Day takes place on May 05, 2017. The day is declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) and encourages patients and their family members to join health workers in their efforts to practice good hand hygiene. According to WHO, every year, hundreds of millions of patients around the world are affected by health care-associated infections. More than half of these infections could be prevented by caregivers properly cleaning their hands at key moments in patient care.
The main medical purpose of washing hands is to cleanse the hands of pathogens (including bacteria or viruses) and chemicals which can cause personal harm or disease.
Proper hygiene is extremely important to us and is something we take very seriously at our facility.
Our professional staff are highly trained in proper medical hygiene and we applaud their dedication and efforts today and every day.
The case for washing your hands:
• Best way to reduce healthcare associated infections by up to 50%
• 80% of all infectious diseases are transmitted by touch
• Fingernails and surrounding areas harbor the most microorganisms
• Is the single most important thing you can do (other than a vaccine) to prevent the flu
• Thorough hand washing will decrease the viral count to a point below the infectious threshold
• 95% of people say they wash their hands after using the toilet but when observed, only 67% did!
• The average time healthcare workers washed their hands was 7 seconds, less than one-half the time recommended
• Most people don’t wash their hands properly, forgetting their thumbs and between their fingers
Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer or Soap/Water?
Soap and water:
• When hands are visibly dirty
• After known or suspected exposure to Clostridium difficile
• After known or suspected exposure to patients with infectious diarrhea during norovirus outbreaks
• If exposure to Bacillus anthracis is suspected or proven
• Before eating
• After using the restroom
Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer:
• For everything else
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