Evidence of hand hygiene as the building block for infection prevention and control

Overview

On the basis of scientific evidence and with input from international experts and IPC colleagues working in countries, WHO recently identified the essential elements that every country should have in place to achieve effective IPC and issued new guidelines on Core components of IPC programmes at the national and acute health care facility level. These guidelines include two specific recommendations on hand hygiene as part of the IPC core components. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the evidence underpinning all the recommendations comes from research on hand hygiene.

This document aims to outline the evidence on hand hygiene included in the systematic literature reviews undertaken as the background for the WHO guidelines. It serves to provide a synopsis of the available evidence evaluating hand hygiene as a main intervention (or part of a broader IPC strategy) and where significant improvement in hand hygiene compliance or alcohol-based handrub consumption, and/or a substantial decrease of HAI or multi-drug resistant organism (MDRO) infection and/or colonization rates were achieved. This evidence is presented according to the eight core components outlined in the WHO guidelines.

Information provided in this document can be useful to discuss the role of hand hygiene as a building block for IPC at national and facility level. Data can be used for motivating policy makers and senior managers to take action to visibly support hand hygiene programmes or for showing health care workers the impact of hand hygiene on patient outcomes, in particular in the context of 5 May (global hand hygiene day) campaigning activities.