6 May 2025, Cairo, Egypt – "It might be gloves. It's always hand hygiene", the theme of this year’s World Hand Hygiene Day (WHHD), emphasizing the critical role of hand hygiene as a simple yet powerful and cost-saving infection prevention and control (IPC) intervention, alongside the importance of appropriate glove use and the need to be aware of the environmental impact of gloves on medical waste generation.
Held each year on 5 May, WHHD highlights hand hygiene as a simple yet powerful intervention that can protect patients, health care workers and visitors from harm caused by avoidable health care-associated infections (HAIs).
The Global action plan and monitoring framework (GAPMF) on infection prevention and control (IPC) 2024-2030 sets hand hygiene compliance as a key national indicator, to be established in all reference hospitals by the end of 2026. Currently, just 68% of countries report implementation.
In the Eastern Mediterranean Region an estimated 40% of health care facilities lack basic hygiene services, and 71% lack comprehensive health care waste management services. The statistics underscore the need for investment in water, sanitation, hygiene and waste (WASH) services to improve infection prevention and control implementation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) plays a leading role in promoting hand hygiene practices, not least through the annual WHHD campaign. Among the recommendations WHO is promoting this year are:
optimal hand hygiene practices using the WHO 5 Moments for hand hygiene and appropriate glove use within health care workflows. (It is important to remember that medical gloves get contaminated as easily as bare hands. They do not offer 100% protection. Gloves should be removed, for example, after touching a patient and hand hygiene performed immediately as per the WHO 5 Moments);
integration of hand hygiene into national IPC strategies and facility-level standard operating procedures;
awareness raising about the environmental impact of improper use of gloves on waste generation and management. Excessive glove use contributes significantly to the volume of health care waste. Appropriate glove use and hand hygiene can help minimize this. Using gloves when not indicated wastes resources and does not necessarily reduce the transmission of germs; and
proper glove use to help prevent the spread of infections. Gloves are not a substitute for hand hygiene. They should be used only when necessary, and hand hygiene practiced before and after glove use.
Improved IPC, including hand hygiene and WASH, is urgently needed to provide minimum protection and meet HAIs and antimicrobial resistance reduction targets. Governments and health authorities are urged to prioritize integration of hand hygiene into national IPC strategies and ensure that all health care facilities have standard operating procedures for hand hygiene.
On WHHD, WHO provides various resources, including guidelines, posters and virtual badges, to support hand hygiene campaigns. WHO also offers a Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework to evaluate hand hygiene practices in health care facilities.
By working together with stakeholders and partners to promote hand hygiene we can help prevent the spread of infections, including infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.