Save Lives Clean Your Hands: Why This is so Important

The ‘Save Lives: Clean Your Hands’ campaign was started in 2009 across the world. It is celebrated on May 5 every year during World Hand Hygiene Day [1]. Its goal is to promote and sustain hand hygiene across the world and ensure this aspect of healthcare gets the visibility it deserves. It aims to bring people together and raise awareness about the importance of washing hands to prevent and control the spread of infection.

Read on to understand more about the Save Lives: Clean Your Hands 2022 campaign and its relevance in the world today.

Idea behind Save Lives: Clean Your Hands 

The thought behind this ‘Wash hands, save lives’ campaign is prioritizing the practice of washing hands in health facilities and at home. It focuses on ensuring that people across all levels in healthcare understand the importance of hand hygiene. This campaign is meant to reach the medical fraternity, from doctors, orderlies and nurses to cleaners and other service providers to clean hands after touching a patient or anything in the patient’s immediate surroundings. With this step, even you can protect yourself and make sure that germs do not spread.

Theme of the Save Lives: Clean Your Hands – 2022 campaign 

The theme for Save Lives: Clean Your Hands 2022 is to work together on hand hygiene to maintain a high quality of care and assure safer care everywhere. The slogan for World Hygiene Day 2022 is ‘Unite for Safety: Clean Your Hands’. It focuses on recognizing that you can add a culture of quality and safety by cleaning your hands with the right products [2].

Additional Read: Earth Day Activities

Importance of the ‘Save Lives: Clean Your Hands’ campaign 

Save Lives: Clean Your Hands is relevant to everyone right from patients to their families and health workers. You use your hands to touch your face without even realizing it. In this way, germs get transferred from your hand to your body and make you sick. Germs can also be passed on from one person to another through physical contact like shaking hands. Thus, the Wash Your Hands: Save Lives campaign is important to prevent such things from happening.

How are infections spread from our hands? 

The transmission of infections takes place in a sequence of events as follows.  

• The organisms are present on a patient’s skin or are shed onto the surrounding objects of the patient.  
• The organisms may get transferred to the hands of health workers and spread further to other patients.  
• This is how bacteria and viruses also spread, and it shows why it is important to wash your hands.  
• This practice helps in many instances like providing immunity during pregnancy. Washing hands properly ensures that the disease does not spread to the mother or the baby.

When should we wash our hands?  

The ‘Save Lives: Clean Your Hands’ campaign shows us the importance of maintaining hand hygiene, a habit for follow without failure [3].

Make sure to wash your hands after you have visited a public area or touched common surfaces such as: 

• Railings or banisters  
• Light switches 
• Cash registers  
• Shopping carts or baskets 
• Touch screens of various devices  
• Outdoor garbage cans or dumpsters 
• Gas pumps  
• Doorknobs 
• Washrooms 
• Other common surfaces

Additional Read: What is World Immunization Week

The Save Lives: Clean your hands campaign is important in creating awareness and stopping the spread of infections not only in healthcare settings, but also in workplaces, homes, malls, and other public spaces. You may already know the importance of handwashing to curb the spread of COVID-19, and it is vital for you to continue with the practice as a healthy lifestyle habit.

If you want more information on how to wash your hands or suspect an infection, book an online consultation on Bajaj Finserv Health immediately. This helps you get medical advice from top specialists in your city without leaving home. Make small moves to boost your health in a big way and don’t forget to wash your hands throughout the day!