Each year the World Health Organization (WHO) SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign aims to progress the goal of maintaining a global profile on the importance of hand hygiene in health and care and to ‘bring people together’ in support of hand hygiene improvement globally. The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health and care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way.

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands incorporates a global annual World Hand Hygiene day on 5 May to focus on the importance of improving hand hygiene in health care with WHO providing support for these efforts.

The theme for 2025 is:

It might be gloves. It's always hand hygiene.

The aims are to:

• Promote optimal hand hygiene practices (using the appropriate technique and according to the WHO 5 Moments) and the times for appropriate glove use within the health care workflow.
• Promote inclusion of hand hygiene within national IPC strategies, as well as standard operating procedures (SOPs) at facility level, according to the recommendations of the WHO global action plan and monitoring framework 2024-2030.
• Raise awareness of the environmental and climate impact of gloves on waste generation and management, especially when used unnecessarily.

Call to action

Make sure that your organisation is taking part in this day and register with the WHO Sign up for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign' then start planning your local campaign using the different resources below. 

WHO Resources

Use the campaign materials and messaging on the WHO Hand Hygiene Day 2025 webpage. 

Everyone can get involved in hand hygiene and target audience campaign posters with key messages are available.

• Those who receive care - Gloves do not replace hand hygiene.
• Infection prevention and control practitioners - Educate on proper glove use.
• Healthcare workers - Practice hand hygiene and wear gloves appropriately.
• Policy makers - Because hand hygiene is a very cost-effective way to achieve your public health targets.

Register for the WHO Infection Prevention and Control Global Webinar on 5th May 2025.

NSS ARHAI resources

Read Chapter 1 of the NIPCM  and find out how, when and what product to use for hand hygiene. 

Hand hygiene technique

Use the step-by-step hand technique posters to make sure hand hygiene is performed correctly. 

• Appendix 1 - How to hand wash (step by step images)
• Appendix 2 - How to hand rub (step by step images)

Health and care workers should follow the moments of hand hygiene to stop infection spreading when providing care.

• 5 moments of Hand Hygiene
• 4 moments of Hand Hygiene (Care Home settings)

Use the hand hygiene literature reviews to learn more about the evidence that informs hand hygiene recommendations in the NIPCM.

Glove use and selection 

The glove selection chart in Appendix 5 of the NIPCM helps you answer the question 'When should I use gloves' and using this can stop excess glove useage and help the environment. 

Use the gloves literature review to learn more about the evidence that informs glove use in the NIPCM. 

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) resources

The Scottish Infection Prevention and Control Education Pathway (SIPCEP) foundation layer covers the 10 standard infection control precautions and other introductory infection control topics. These include:

• Hand hygiene 
• Personal Protective Equipment (including reference to 'Gloves off' campaign)
• Infection prevention and control: refresher for clinical and non-clinical