- Automatic translation

The project SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is an international initiative led by the WHO to support health workers in promoting hand hygiene in healthcare. Hand hygiene is important in preventing healthcare-related infections that can cause complications and death. Healthcare institutions can become members of the project by registering for participation.

Hand hygiene when providing healthcare services is extremely important, and the importance of healthcare professionals washing and/or sanitizing their hands before contact with clean utensils and clients and after providing services needs to be constantly reiterated.

The most important infection prevention

Hand hygiene, including washing hands with soap and water, is critical for infection prevention because direct and indirect contact is the most common way germs are transmitted between people.

Hands must be washed:

• Before starting cooking

• Before and after meals

• After toilet use

• After direct contact with wounds, blood and any body fluids

• After changing a baby's diaper

• After contact with animals

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of hand hygiene was widely discussed. It can be said that there has been a general awareness in that regard and many companies started offering hand sanitizer to customers. At the same time, the use of protective gloves increased, which have now become more common for various jobs.

Protective gloves

In most cases, protective gloves are manufactured as disposable gloves to protect hands from heavy contamination during dirty work. Gloves should be removed after work, and hands should be cleaned by hand washing or hand sanitiser. Gloves are not intended for use between jobs, clean and dirty, because they can carry dirt and germs just like hands. It is therefore prudent and provides false protection to constantly wear gloves instead of breaking the transmission lines by hand washing and/or hand sanitizer.

The Chief Epidemiologist