Fight antibiotic resistance - it's in your hands!
Each year on 5 May, the “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign takes place as part of a major global effort led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to improve hand hygiene in healthcare settings. The campaign was launched in 2009 as an extension of the WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge: “Clean Care is Safer Care”. This year’s campaign highlights the fact that infection prevention and control, including hand hygiene, can make a difference towards managing antibiotic resistance in healthcare settings.
With the slogan Fight antibiotic resistance – it’s in your hands!, WHO calls on to different groups to take actions:
- Health workers: “Clean your hands at the right times and stop the spread of antibiotic resistance.”
- Hospital Chief Executive Officers and Administrators: “Lead a year-round infection prevention and control programme to protect your patients from resistant infections."
- Policy makers: "Stop antibiotic resistance spread by making infection prevention and hand hygiene a national policy priority.”
- Infection Prevention and Control leaders: "Implement WHO’s Core Components for infection prevention, including hand hygiene, to combat antibiotic resistance.
ECDC supports this campaign and highlights the importance of infection prevention and control measures as one of the main strategies to tackle the growing threat posed by antibiotic resistance.
