Global Handwashing Day

The stated aims of Global Handwashing Day are to:[2]

• Foster and support a general culture of handwashing with soap in all societies
• Shine a spotlight on the state of handwashing in each country
• Raise awareness about the benefits of handwashing with soap.

• 2020 - Hand Hygiene for All.[12]
• 2019 - Clean Hands for All. In the USA, the US CDC used the theme Life is Better with Clean Hands and launched throughout the USA a national hand hygiene campaign[13] targeting adults who are parents and caregivers in communicating the importance of handwashing before cooking at home and after using the bathroom when out in public.[14] They used ideas such as 'Handwashing: a family activity' and 'Handwashing: A healthy habit in the kitchen' when focusing on parent' educational roles with their children.[15][16][17]
• 2018 - Clean hands - a recipe for health.[18]
• 2017 - Our hands, our future.[19]
• 2016 - Make handwashing a habit.[20][21]
• 2015 - Raise a hand for hygiene.[22][23]
• 2014 - Clean hands save lives. In 2014, Global Handwashing Day was used as an opportunity to fight Ebola.[24] In Nigeria, for example, Concern Universal and Carex sponsored events featuring singer Sunny Neji.[25]
• 2013 - The power is in your hands.[26]
• 2012 - I am a handwashing advocate.[27]
• 2011 - Clean hands save lives.[28]
• 2010 - Children and Schools.[29]
• 2009 - Spread the word, not the germs.[30]
• 2008 - The focus for Global Handwashing Day's inaugural year in 2008 was school children. In that year, the members pledged to get the maximum number of school children handwashing with soap in more than 70 countries. In India in 2008, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and his teammates joined an estimated 100 million schoolchildren around the country in lathering up for better health and hygiene as part of the first Global Handwashing Day.[31]

Handwashing with soap is very effective and the least expensive way to prevent diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.[34] Pneumonia, a major ARI (acute respiratory infection), is the number one cause of mortality among children under five years old, killing an estimated 1.8 million children per year. Diarrhea and pneumonia together account for almost 3.5 million child deaths annually.[35] Handwashing with soap is estimated to reduce cases of diarrhea by 30% and respiratory infections by 21% in children under the age of five.[2]

It is important to make handwashing into a habit. Making good handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into a regular habit can save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.[36]

Handwashing is usually done together with other sanitation interventions as part of water, sanitation and hygiene WASH programmes.

The Global Handwashing Day helps raise awareness of the importance of washing with soap, but it also makes it fun for children to get involved.[37]

Proper hygiene requires that individuals know the importance of good hygiene and develop the habits to carry it out. There are people with plenty of money who nonetheless lack the important habits of timely handwashing with soap, and thereby unknowingly endanger themselves and others around them.[38]

Peer influence is significant for seeing increased handwashing. In a study conducted in Kenya, researchers found that students were much more likely to wash their hands when another student is present.[39] Peer influence is only successful, however, when students know that handwashing is a desirable action.

The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates a World Hand Hygiene Day on 5 May. In 2018 the theme was prevention of sepsis in health care.[40] The theme of the year before was to combat antibiotic resistance (AMR).[41]