Global Handwashing Day is celebrated annually on October 15th to promote handwashing with soap at key times. Proper handwashing can help reduce the spread of diseases and save lives. The campaign aims to improve handwashing habits worldwide by raising awareness of its importance. Ignaz Semmelweis's discovery in 1846 that handwashing with chlorine reduced childbed fever mortality rates demonstrated hand cleansing can prevent infection. A Lifebuoy campaign in an Indian village significantly reduced diarrhea rates among children by encouraging more frequent handwashing.

1. "Let's wash our hands and keep ourselves healthy!"

2. Global Handwashing Day is a campaign to motivate
and mobilize people around the world to improve their
handwashing habits. Washing hands at critical points
during the day and washing with soap are both
important. Global Handwashing Day occurs on 15
October of each year.
Inequalities in handwashing facilities and effective
handwashing promotion programs can put individuals at
higher risk for diseases that impact their health, education,
and economic outcomes.

3. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor working in Vienna General Hospital, is known as the
father of hand hygiene.
In 1846, he noticed that, the women giving birth in the medical student doctor-run
maternity ward in his hospital, were much more likely to develop a fever and die.
compared to the women, giving birth in the adjacent midwife-run maternity ward.
He noticed that, the doctors and medical students, often visited the maternity ward directly
after performing an Operation, have cadaverous particles on their hands.
Midwives did not conduct surgery, so they were not exposed to these particles have no
deaths.
As a result, Semmelweis imposed a new rule, mandating handwashing with chlorine for
doctors. The rates of death in his maternity ward fell dramatically. This was the first proof
that cleansing hands could prevent infection.
later in Scutari, Florence Nightingale, implemented handwashing and other hygiene
practices, in the war hospital in which she worked.

4. In India, diarrhea, is a major killer with about 1,000 children below the age of five,
dying every day due to diarrhoea alone.
Thesgora is a small Village in Chhindwara District of Madhya Pradesh State, India,
known for the highest cases of diarrhea recorded.
over 40% of infant deaths in India, occur during the first 28 days of life from this
village only.
Lifebuoy campaign to Thesgora “Help Children Reach 5” program with great
creativity and flare. children in Thesgora now, wash their hands on two additional
occasions per day, and 33% more mothers have started, washing their hands with
soap more often. Diarrhoeal rates have also fallen significantly.
“Help a Child Reach 5” is a winning social responsibility program. It has already
reached more than 250 million people and is on target to reach a billion people by
2020.

5. This year’s theme follows the push to leave no one behind in the
Sustainable Development Agenda.

6. Only 60% of the world’s population has access to a basic handwashing
facility