Hand hygiene: going for gold.

Abstract

Noting the high mortality rate in a medical student delivery room, in 1896, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweiss introduced a policy of hand washing with chlorinated lime solution and witnessed a ten-fold reduction in death rate (Noakes et al, 2008). Initially contentious, his findings gradually gained traction, and hand hygiene is now accepted as one of the most important measures for preventing infection. A series of guidelines developed in the USA between 1981 and 2002 were considered the seminal works, until the World Health Organization (WHO) provided a comprehensive overview of the essential aspects of hand hygiene. These consensus-based recommendations are seen as the most extensive review to date (WHO, 2009).