May 5 is being celebrated as the World Hand Hygiene Day. This year's theme for the day is 'Save lives - clean your hands', which forms a major part of a global initiative by the World Health Organization (WHO) to improve hand hygiene in health care.

According to the Health Quality & Safety Commission, the purpose of World Hand Hygiene Day is to timely remind people about the importance of cleaning their hands to combat healthcare-acquired infections.

"It sounds really basic to tell people to have clean hands but we know that lots of patients get infections while receiving health care", says HQSC Chief Executive, Dr Janice Wilson. "Making sure hands are clean is a crucial part of ensuring quality and patient safety in our hospitals", he further added.

In context to same, five important moments have also been identified by WHO, as when the health workers must perform hand hygiene, starting with before any contact with patient (i. e. before washing a patient), before starting with any medical procedure (i. e. before giving an injection or changing a dressing), after a procedure or body fluid exposure (e. g. if a patient vomits), after patient contact and after contact with patient surroundings.

WHO also informs that millions of patients worldwide are today being severely affected by healthcare-associated infections (HCAI), and thus it is important for people to adopt good hand hygiene as this could successfully prevent the infection from spreading.