Global Handwashing Day

Sangita Thangjam
Global Handwashing Day is an annual global advocacy day dedicated to advocating for handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.
Global Handwashing Day was founded by the Global Handwashing Partnership, and is an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times. Global Handwashing Day is celebrated every year on October 15th.
The first Global Handwashing Day was held in 2008, when over 120 million children around the world washed their hands with soap in more than 70 countries. Since 2008, community and national leaders have used Global Handwashing Day to spread the word about handwashing, build sinks and tippy taps, and demonstrate the simplicity and value of clean hands.  Since then, Global Handwashing Day has continued to grow.  Global Handwashing Day is endorsed by governments, schools, international institutions, civil society organizations, NGOs, private companies, individuals, and more. The 2019 Global Handwashing Day theme is “Clean Hands for All.” This year’s theme follows the push to leave no one behind in the Sustainable Development Agenda. Inequalities in handwashing facilities and effective handwashing promotion programs can put individuals at higher risk for diseases that impact their health, education, and economic outcomes. This year’s theme reminds us that we must be inclusive when addressing handwashing disparities.
No matter your role, you can celebrate Global Handwashing Day.  Every year more than 3.5 million children do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday because of diarrhoea and pneumonia.Hand washing is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoel diseases and pneumonia  Hand hygiene is now regarded as one of the most important element of infection control activities. In the wake of the growing burden of health care associated infections (HCAIs), the increasing severity of illness and complexity of treatment, superimposed by multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogen infections, health care practitioners (HCPs) are reversing back to the basics of infection preventions by simple measures like hand hygiene.
This is because enough scientific evidence supports the observation that if properly implemented, hand hygiene alone can significantly reduce the risk of cross-transmission of infection in healthcare facilities.
Hand washing should become an educational priority. Increasing the emphasis on infection control, giving the charge of infection control to senior organizational members, changing the paradigm of surveillance to continuous monitoring and effective data feedback are some of the important measures which need to be initiated in hospitals.
The health care practitioners in our country need to brace themselves to inculcate the simple, basic and effective practice of hand hygiene in their daily patient care activities and serve as a role model for future generations of doctors, nurses and paramedical personnel.
The writer is Convenor, Infection Control Committee & Consultant Microbiologist, Shija Hospitals & Research Institute Pvt. Ltd.