This year, Who celebrates 17 years of this global campaign. Each year the World Health Organization (WHO) SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign aims to progress the goal of maintaining a global profile on the importance of hand hygiene in health and care and to ‘bring people together’ in support of hand hygiene improvement globally. The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health and care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way. SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands incorporates a global annual World Hand Hygiene day on 5 May to focus on the importance of improving hand hygiene in health care with WHO providing support for these efforts. The theme for 2025 is: It might be gloves. It's always hand hygiene. Objectives of World Hand Hygiene Day 2025
- Promote optimal hand hygiene practices (using the appropriate technique and according to the WHO 5 Moments) and the times for appropriate glove use within the health care workflow.
- Promote inclusion of hand hygiene within national IPC strategies, as well as standard operating procedures (SOPs) at facility level, according to the recommendations of the WHO global action plan and monitoring framework 2024-2030.
- Raise awareness of the environmental and climate impact of gloves on waste generation and management, especially when used unnecessarily.