This year, in response to World Hand Hygiene Day 2021 with the theme “Seconds Save Lives – Clean Your Hands”, FV Hospital will hold a training session on “5 moments of hand hygiene” on 5^th May, guided by Dr Vu Truong Son (Head of Infection Control Unit). The Hospital’s Infection Control Unit will also organise an information counter on the ground floor to guide people in how to correctly wash their hands.

Since 2009, a global campaign titled “Save lives: Clean your hands” was held. Every year on 5^th May, the world will together remind each other the importance of maintaining hand hygiene. Since its launch World Hand Hygiene Day has increased safety in healthcare and created opportunities to bring everyone together.

For World Hand Hygiene Day 2021, WHO is calling on healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities to undertake effective hand hygiene at the point of care. The point of care refers to the place where three elements come together: the patient, the health care worker and care or treatment involving contact with the patient or their surroundings. Thereby, WHO continues to recommend all health workers clean their hands at five specific times, to effectively prevent bacteria from spreading during health care. This can be found by using the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy.

Given the Covid-19 epidemic situation that has been on-going for almost 2 years now, the slogan “Seconds Save Lives – Clean Your Hands” in this event is even more urgent than ever. Infection control is an important issue at FV and regular hand washing has become a routine of every employee. The regular, timely, 6-step hand washing technique should be widely disseminated to the surrounding community and not just the hospital staff.