Steps of Hand Washing

Handwashing is one of the best ways to protect yourself and your family from getting sick. Handwashing alone can reduce 2/3 of spreading the illness.
You may get confused as different international and national bodies recommend various steps ranging from 5-9 for Handwashing!

Here we are discussing the steps of Handwashing recommended by:
World Health Organization (W.H.O.)

This has ideal basic 6 steps
1. Palm to palm
2. Palm to dorsum with interlaced fingers
3. Palm to palm with interlaced fingers
4. Backs of fingers to opposing palm, with fingers interlaced
5. Rotational rubbing of the thumb and wrist, with the palm of the other hand.
6. Tip of fingers in rotational motion

Pic Source: https://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/

The evidence for clean hands

The problem

Each year, hundreds of millions of patients around the world are affected by healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs). Although HCAI is the most frequent adverse event in health care, its true global burden remains unknown because of the difficulty in gathering reliable data. Understanding and assessing the global burden of HCAI is one of the key areas of work of the Clean Care is Safer Care program. Systematic reviews of the literature have been conducted to identify published studies from both developed and developing countries and highlight the magnitude of the HCAI problem. The results of these reviews were published online on 10 December 2010 in The Lancet, and are compiled in a comprehensive WHO Report on the burden of endemic healthcare-associated infection worldwide.