Clean Hands Save Lives

Clean Hands Save Lives

You may not know it, but an innovation has made our world a better place. The use of alcohol-based handrubs protects us from infectious diseases and saves millions of lives each year through safer health care.Here is the story of this revolutionary formulation, made available without patent and offered as a gift to humanity by Professor Didier Pittet and his team at Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (HUG). From bush doctors to giant pharmaceutical corporations, everyone can now produce effective handrubs, cheaply and easily.Didier Pittet's medical odyssey has taken him to the four corners of the Earth. It also reveals a new path open to human society, one that pro- mises a radical shift from a predatory economic system to an economy of peace.“WHO is fortunate that Didier Pittet said “yes” when the call went out for his help. [...] Much can be learned from the story that is told so well and so inspirationally in this book.”Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization.

WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care

The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to improve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants. Definitions of health-care settings are proposed in Appendix 1. These Guidelines and the associated WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy and an Implementation Toolkit (http://www.who.int/gpsc/en/) are designed to offer health-care facilities in Member States a conceptual framework and practical tools for the application of recommendations in practice at the bedside. While ensuring consistency with the Guidelines recommendations, individual adaptation according to local regulations, settings, needs, and resources is desirable. This extensive review includes in one document sufficient technical information to support training materials and help plan implementation strategies. The document comprises six parts.

State of the world’s hand hygiene