Key resources on hand hygiene
Guidelines and documents
Aide-memoire: Infection prevention and control (IPC) principles and procedures for COVID-19 vaccination...
This Aide Memoire is for policy makers, immunization programme managers, infection prevention and control (IPC) focal points at national, sub-national,...

Hand hygiene for all initiative: improving access and behaviour in health care facilities
The WHO and UNICEF-led Hand Hygiene for All Initiative aims at ensuring implementation for WHO's global recommendations on hand hygiene to prevent and...

Core competencies for infection prevention and control professionals
The purpose of this document is to define who is the infection prevention and control (IPC) professional and identify what core competencies are needed...
Recommendations to Member States to improve hand hygiene practices to help prevent the transmission of...
WHO recommends member states provide universal access to public hand hygiene stations and making their use obligatory on entering and leaving any public...
Minimum requirements for infection prevention and control programmes
The purpose of this document is to present and promote the minimum requirements for IPC programmes at the national and health care facility level, identified...
The scope of this document is to address practical aspects related to the performance of routine hand hygiene while providing outpatient care. This document...
A guide to the implementation of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy
WHO_IER_PSP_2009.02_chi.pdf (5.297Mb) WHO_IER_PSP_2009.02_per.pdf (1.857Mb)
WHO guidelines on hand hygiene in health care
The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough...

Hand hygiene self-assessment framework 2010
The Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework is a systematic tool with which to obtain a situation analysis of hand hygiene promotion and practices within...

Hand Hygiene: Why, How & When?
Thousands of people die every day around the world from infections acquired while receiving health care.Hands are the main pathways of germ transmission...
Key reminders
The Your 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene approach defines the key moments when health-care workers should perform hand hygiene.
This evidence-based, field-tested, user-centred approach is designed to be easy to learn, logical and applicable in a wide range of settings.
This approach recommends health-care workers to clean their hands:
- before touching a patient;
- before clean/aseptic procedures;
- after body fluid exposure/risk;
- after touching a patient; and
- after touching patient surroundings.