Rāngi Horoi Ringa
World Hand Hygiene Day
World Hand Hygiene Day 2024 
Every year on 5 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) runs the Save lives: Clean your hands campaign to promote the use of hand hygiene in health care facilities and beyond. At the heart of the World Hand Hygiene Day is the message that all health care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way.
The WHO sets a different theme each year and offers free resources for local use.
The 2024 theme for World Hand Hygiene Day is:
Promoting knowledge and capacity building of health and care workers through innovative and impactful training and education, on infection prevention and control, including hand hygiene.
The 2024 slogan for World Hand Hygiene Day to support this theme is:
Why is sharing knowledge about hand hygiene still so important? Because it helps stop the spread of harmful germs in health care.
Watch the WHO video for World Hand Hygiene Day 2024: Sharing your knowledge about hand hygiene: the opportunity of 5 May 2024!
Resources
In addition to the resources available on the WHO World Hand Hygiene Day website, Te Tāhū Hauora has prepared a quiz, screensaver, email signature graphic and pens that include the Hand Hygiene New Zealand logo. You can download the digital resources below.
- Email signature graphic (36KB, png)
- Screensaver (406KB, png)
- Quiz to test your knowledge of the 5 moments for hand hygiene:
- online version
- printable version (445KB, docx)
- quiz answers (445KB, docx)
- flyer with QR code (581KB, pdf)
Resources from the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control
As always, we would love to hear how you are celebrating World Hand Hygiene Day in your workplace. If you would like to share your ideas and photos, please email us at hhnz@hqsc.govt.nz.
Promoting good hand hygiene practice
World Hand Hygiene Day is an opportunity to promote best practice with hand hygiene through education and information sharing. Here are some activities and ideas for World Hand Hygiene Day 2024.
Use your organisation’s hand hygiene results to develop activities for World Hand Hygiene Day
Use results from the Hand Hygiene New Zealand dashboard to look for opportunities to celebrate and improve hand hygiene practices in your organisation.
Share your results widely across your organisation with both health care workers and consumers.
Schedule hand hygiene auditing with real-time feedback on the day. Promote the collection of 5–10 moments by gold auditors during their shift and share the results at the end of the shift.
Inform and educate
My 5 Moments: the game
The WHO developed My 5 Moments: The Game to combine the fun, engaging and enlightening side of gaming with the scientific and theoretical approaches to hand hygiene improvement. It is designed to keep patients and health workers safe by improving hand hygiene practice in the real world.
Profile your leaders
Create a poster of the hands and faces of the hand hygiene leaders in your district and ask staff to match the hands with the right person. This will help staff recognise who they can go to if they have any questions. Provide morning tea for the area that gets the most right.
Song competition
Run a competition to see who can write the best song about the 5 moments of hand hygiene. The area with the best song wins morning tea for their team.
Patient and whānau activities
Develop an activity that patients and their whānau can be involved in, for example, a word search on hand hygiene on meal trays, with information about when they should clean their hands when in hospital. You could also leave copies in the waiting room in the emergency department.
Celebrating World Hand Hygiene Day in Aotearoa New Zealand 2023
Organisations around the motu promoted hand hygiene on 5 May. Photos from some of that activity are shown below.
Te Whatu Ora districts celebrate World Hand Hygiene Day 2023
Te Tai o Poutini West Coast celebrates Hand Hygiene Day 2023. View the poster here.
Last updated: 2nd April, 2024
