Clean Hospitals Day
20 October 2024

Improving environmental hygiene practices

Clean Hospitals Day is celebrated each year on the 20th of October to raise global awareness of healthcare environmental hygiene (HEH) and increase engagement of healthcare facilities (HCFs) around the world.

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Clean Hospitals Day
20 October 2024

Improving environmental hygiene practices

Clean Hospitals Day is celebrated each year on the 20th of October to raise global awareness of healthcare environmental hygiene (HEH) and increase engagement of healthcare facilities (HCFs) around the world.

Partner:

Clean Hospitals is proud to partner with the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC – https://apic.org)  during this year’s International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW – https://infectionpreventionandyou.org/iipw/), themed “Moving the Needle on Infection Prevention.” From October 13-19, 2024, we will join efforts to raise awareness about the critical role infection prevention plays in healthcare and beyond. Each day of the week will highlight key areas like healthcare worker safety, patient care, and public health preparedness. Explore APIC’s toolkit for resources and join us in making hospitals cleaner, safer, and infection-free environments worldwide.

Get started by joining the Clean Hospitals LinkedIn group

Why was the Clean Hospitals Day created ?

This global awareness raising campaign was created in 2019 to bring international attention to the need for an increased focus on healthcare environmental hygiene and to highlight its importance in patient safety. It is a call to join Clean Hospitals in celebrating and empowering all of the environmental service workers and management working to improve environmental hygiene every day.

What is the objective of this initiative?

Clean Hospitals Day aims to increase the global visibility and recognition of the importance of healthcare environmental hygiene.

For whom are we celebrating?

This day is for all of the people working in or involved with healthcare environmental hygiene. This means all environmental service workers, hospital stakeholders, management, healthcare workers, as well as our partners who produce the products, education, and technologies essential to environmental hygiene. It is also for patients, because patients are the people most affected by a contaminated healthcare environment.

Our mission

The role of Clean Hospitals Day, the accompanying international conference, and the Clean Hospitals project as a whole is to increase awareness and lead change in environmental hygiene culture, through guidance and support for the adoption of best practices. This will encourage the development of global standards for environmental hygiene, as well as protect the lives of patients, staff, and visitors.

More about the Clean Hospitals initiative

Our Vision

Clean Hospitals is a coalition of international stakeholders who work explicitly to promote healthcare environmental hygiene. Our aim is to protect patients, environmental service workers, healthcare workers, and the natural environment through improved environmental hygiene. We believe that by making healthcare facilities a cleaner place, healthcare systems are better equipped to protect their inhabitants.

Clean Hospitals aims to connect stakeholders from all over the world and enables them to improve healthcare environmental hygiene synergistically. We aim to become the leading voice in healthcare environmental hygiene; through our stakeholders, academic experience and the science-based and transdisciplinary approach. This includes conducting high-quality studies, reviews, and creating tools to generate scientific evidence and guidance to decision makers.

Why we are in the position to do what we do

This initiative was born from a lack of environmental hygiene awareness and guidance around the world and the urgent need for an international initiative. The chair of Clean Hospitals, Prof. Dider Pittet, has already changed the world with his work in showing how improved hand hygiene can prevent infections. He gave the formula for alcohol based handrub to the World Health Organization patent-free, and revolutionized the field of infection prevention and control.

Prof. Pittet launched the Global Patient Safety Challenge in 2005, leading to millions of lives saved across the world.

Our goal is to do for environmental hygiene what has been done for the field of hand hygiene.

Scope of the initiative

Clean Hospitals addresses all the components of healthcare environmental hygiene including the cleaning and disinfection of surfaces, air control, water control, waste management, sterilization and device reprocessing, automated disinfection technologies, laundry, digitalization and much more.