In honor of Florence Nightingaleʼs 200th birthday, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared 2020 the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife.” In addition to championing the nursing profession, Nightingaleʼs role was also fundamental for the recognition of the importance of infection prevention and control (IPC): she was among the first to recognize that a caregiver could transmit germs and thus cause patient harm. Nurses and midwives make up nearly 50% of the global health work force, 1 and these healthcare workers have the most frequent contact with patients. Thus, they are pivotal figures in the fight against healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) as well as neonatal and maternal sepsis.
On May 5, 2020, for the annual celebration of the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign, the WHO will focus on the essential role that nurses and midwives play in contributing to saving millions of lives each year by championing clean care. Despite many improvements around the world, rates of HAI remain unacceptably high, and most are transmitted by healthcare workers’ hands. Therefore, hand hygiene promotion strategies must be constantly reinforced and improved. Clean healthcare has recently been recognized by WHO as one of the most urgent challenges to be tackled by the global community over the next 10 years. 2 Actively engaging the expertise of nurses and midwives in the development, implementation, and evaluation of hand hygiene promotion contributes to clean health care.
Along with recognizing the critical importance of nurses and midwives to patient care, the aim of the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife” is also to highlight the major global shortage of healthcare workers and that more than half of the shortage is of nurses and midwives. 1 The WHO estimates that for countries to succeed in reaching the Sustainable Development Goal No. 3 on health and well-being, the world will need an additional 9 million nurses and midwives by the year 2030. 1 Education and job creation in the health and social sectors has been proven to result in improved health outcomes, global health security, and economic growth. 1 Having adequate healthcare worker staffing reduces the risk of HAI and antimicrobial resistance, and is thus recommended by WHO as a core component of effective IPC programs. 3
It is crucial to recognize both the work and the immense responsibility that nurses and midwives carry; we cannot achieve universal health coverage without investing in them. Everyone—including policy makers, healthcare workers, and patients themselves—can contribute to improving hand hygiene and preventing infections (Table 1).
Table 1. The 5 May 2020 World Health Organization SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands Campaign Calls to Action
Abbreviations: IPC, infection prevention and control; WHO, World Health Organization.
Please join us in celebrating this vital and often underappreciated group of HCWs. Nurses and midwives: CLEAN CARE is in YOUR HANDS!
Figure May 5, 2020: “Nurses and Midwives, clean care is in your hands!”
The May 5, 2020, World Health Organization SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign slogan and main promotional image (2020 hashtags: #SupportNursesAndMidwives #HandHygiene #InfectionPrevention). Campaign participants are invited to submit photos or selfies of them holding a board with the slogan and hashtags at www.CleanHandsSaveLives.org .
Acknowledgments
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views, decisions, or policies of the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. The World Health Organization (WHO) takes no responsibility for the information provided or the views expressed in this article.
Financial support
This work is supported by the WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, and the Infection Control Program, University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland. The hand hygiene research activities at the SPCI/WCC are also supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 32003B_163262).
Conflicts of interest
All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.
