In honor of Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared 2020 the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife.” In addition to championing the nursing profession, Nightingale’s role was also fundamental for the recognition of the importance of infection prevention and control (IPC), as 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 workforce [1] and are the group of healthcare workers that have the most frequent contact with patients. This makes them pivotal figures in the fight against healthcareassociated infections (HAI) as well as neonatal and maternal sepsis. On May 5, 2020, for the annual celebration of the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign, 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 the majority of them 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 healthcare.
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