Get involved in Global Handwashing Day

Global Handwashing Day falls on 15 October 2017 

Founded by the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing, the global annual day is to remind individuals to cultivate proper and adequate handwashing habits. By constantly remembering to wash your hands after visiting a washroom, before and after food handling or engaging in activities with cross contamination risks, we can help to reduce the risks of contracting diseases due to poor hygiene. 

As the leading hygiene specialist, we embrace Global Handwashing Day objectives in adhering hand hygiene standards by fostering the culture locally and reinforce the benefits of handwashing. 

We can transmit germs and bacteria in various ways:

• Spread germs through food preparation and consumption 
• Close contact with unwell people or in public 
• Contact or interaction through contamination hands 
• Adopting poor washroom habits & hygiene 
• Presence of surfaces with germs and bacteria

As our hands are constantly in contact with surfaces, actions, activities or an environment with people interaction and traffic, we are unable to assure hygiene are met with our naked eyes. There is also a misperception of clean surfaces equals to hygienic surfaces. A clean surface may habour germs.

On average, we visit 2,500 times to the washroom in a year, which equates to 6 to 8 times a year. This places us higher risks of cross contamination and picking up diseases relating to hygiene such as gastrointestinal infection, for example Salmonella and respiratory infections such as influenza.

It only takes 20 seconds to wash your hands and a constant reminder and habit to remember to wash them. Ensure handwashing tools and facilities are made available to cultivate this habit, such as hand soap, hand drying tools and hand sanitisers.

Download your 8 hand washing steps label