Save Lives Clean Your Hands: Why This is so Important?

The 'Save Lives: Clean Your Hands' campaign began in 2009 across the globe. 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.

The 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.

The theme of the Save Lives: Clean Your Hands - 2022 campaign

Seeking to improve our understanding of the importance of cleanliness when it comes to our hands is the theme of all campaigns and programs under the banner of Save Lives: Clean Your Hands 2022. This will help improve the level of care across geographies and infrastructure. 

The slogan for World Hygiene Day 2022 is 'Unite for Safety: Clean Your Hands.' It focuses on the fact that we can all create an ecosystem that highlights safety by washing our hands hygienically [2]. 

Importance of the 'Save Lives: Clean Your Hands' campaign

The Save Lives: Clean Your Hands campaign is meant for all people, be it patients and their families, as well as everyone in the medical fraternity. 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 contacts, like shaking hands. Thus, 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 to 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

The Save Lives: Clean your hand 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!