Assists health care facilities to implement improvements in hand hygiene in accordance with the WHO Guidelines on hand hygiene in health care.

This guide to implementation has been developed to assist health care facilities to implement improvements in hand hygiene in accordance with the WHO Guidelines on hand hygiene in health care. The strategy presented has been designed to be used by any health care facility, irrespective of the level of resources or whether the facility has already implemented any hand hygiene initiatives. The approach focuses primarily on improving hand hygiene compliance by health care workers who work with patients.

Through the actions proposed by the strategy, improvement of infrastructures for hand hygiene along with enhancement of knowledge and perception about hand hygiene and health care-associated infection can be achieved.

The guide is divided into three parts. Part I provides an overview and discusses the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy. Part II details each of the five steps of the strategy: (i) system change; (ii) training/education; (iii) evaluation and feedback; (iv) reminders in the workplace; and (v) institutional safety climate. Part III discusses preparing an action plan and implementing the stepwise approach outlined in Part II.