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SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands

Also: Clean Care is Safer Care (WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge, 2005) · World Hand Hygiene Day (5 May) · My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene

“SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands”

WHO's annual global hand hygiene campaign for health workers, launched in 2009 as an extension of the First Global Patient Safety Challenge "Clean Care is Safer Care" (2005). Every 5 May health facilities register, run activities and use WHO posters and toolkits built around the "My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene" and the WHO multimodal improvement strategy.

Years
2009–now
Country
Switzerland
Topic
Hand hygieneInfectious disease
Asks people to
Start
Strategy
Multi level communitySimple instruction
Channel
Clinical settingEventsPrintSocial (organic)Website
Audience
Clinicians
Health-care workers in hospitals and other facilities worldwide; infection prevention and control teams and facility leaders.

Evidence

Quasi-experimentalPositive

Before-after study of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene strategy at six pilot sites (43 hospitals) in Costa Rica, Italy, Mali, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Dec 2006-Dec 2008 (Allegranzi 2013): compliance rose from 51.0% to 67.2%, with larger gains in low- and middle-income countries; knowledge scores rose; activities were sustained 2 years later. This evaluates the strategy behind the campaign, not the annual 5 May campaign itself.

Sponsor (who paid)

Credits (who made it)

Not recorded yet.

Executions (individual ads)

Related campaigns

Sources

  1. World Hand Hygiene Day: SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands (WHO) sponsor
  2. Allegranzi B, Gayet-Ageron A, Damani N et al. Global implementation of WHO's multimodal strategy for improvement of hand hygiene: a quasi-experimental study. Lancet Infect Dis 13(10):843-51 evaluation · 2013 · DOI 10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70163-4 · PMID 23972825
  3. Moro ML et al. Determinants of success and sustainability of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene promotion campaign, Italy, 2007-2008 and 2014. Euro Surveill 2017 evaluation · 2017 · DOI 10.2807/1560-7917.es.2017.22.23.30546 · PMID 28661390

Research notes

Clinician-facing campaign. Discovered 2026-10-22 (clinician-campaigns pass). WHO page fetched 2026-10-22: launched 2009 as an extension of the First Global Patient Safety Challenge Clean Care is Safer Care; core message that all health-care workers clean hands at the right time and in the right way. country set to CH (WHO headquarters) for a global campaign; adjust if the library has a convention for multilateral campaigns. The 2005 date for Clean Care is Safer Care is from general knowledge, not a fetched page. Evaluation sources added 2026-10-22 (citation snowballing / helpline pass): Moro 2017; evidence level and outcome unchanged.

Record cases/who-save-lives-clean-your-hands.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign