IHHN’s Community Health Directorate Celebrates World Hand Hygiene Day 2023

The Community Health Directorate (CHD) at IHHN celebrated World Hand Hygiene Day by scaling up hand hygiene awareness sessions across all IHHN Primary Care Program (PCP) sites, physically and virtually. The goal was to shed light on the importance of hand hygiene and the consequences the world is facing by neglecting this crucial yet simple hygiene act. 

Celebrations took place on May 4-5, 2023, and were conducted in line with the international theme, “Accelerate action together. SAVE LIVES – Clean Your Hands.” The mission of World Hand Hygiene Day 2023 is to save millions of lives by raising awareness among communities of this basic yet important act. According to WHO, now is a critical time when countries across the world need to accelerate the implementation of lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and increase investments to close gaps in infection prevention and control (IPC), including hand hygiene. In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), research shows that washing hands with soap and water could reduce deaths from diarrheal disease by up to 50%.

The entire campaign was successfully launched by the CHD nursing team and was recognized by the Infection Control Department of IHHN with the “Hand Hygiene Excellence Award” for “Excellence in successfully reducing HAI rates by implementing Hand Hygiene by IHHN Family” – a special award for of their exceptional efforts for raising awareness among communities of remote areas across Pakistan.