Sealed Air’s Diversey Care division is once again supporting the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) annual World Hand Hygiene Day to help raise awareness of how hand hygiene prevents infections and safeguards public health. The theme of this year’s event on Tuesday, May 5 is “Hand hygiene is your entrance door” to reinforce how clean hands are the most important way to fight the spread of illnesses. As part of its support the company is organizing a new global #handsonmyheart photo-art competition on Twitter and Instagram.

Many common infections are most readily spread by personal contact or touching contaminated surfaces, which is why hand hygiene is so important. This is reflected in the WHO’s Five Moments of Hand Hygiene, which recommends that healthcare workers wash their hands:

1.      before patient contact
2.      before an antiseptic task
3.      following the risk of exposure to body fluids
4.      following patient contact
5.      following contact with the surroundings of patients

Diversey Care supports the Five Moments of Hand Hygiene and offers a complete range of products including disinfectant soaps, moistourisers and alcohol rubs which are available in a variety of formulations and formats. The range includes products for regular use, frequent use, food preparation areas and people with allergies.

The company is an active partner and participant with the WHO on a number of wider healthcare programs including the “Private Organizations for Patient Safety” (POPS) initiative. Participants in this global initiative work together to align and improve implementation of WHO recommendations in different parts of the world, including the least developed countries.

As part of its support for this year’s WHO event, Diversey Care is repeating its global “Give Us A Hand To Raise Hand Hygiene Awareness” competition. This year the competition calls for individuals or teams to create photo-artwork and share them on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #handsonmyheart. Entries can also be made through the competition website and they must show at least one hand in the photograph and include a short description on why those hands are worth protecting. The artworks will be judged on how the stories and creativity celebrate life and touch the judges’ hearts. Three winners will each receive an iPad Air 2 tablet. The competition is free to enter and open until Sunday, May 31, 2015.

Last year’s inaugural competition attracted entrants from all over the world who contributed designs to highlight the benefits of hand hygiene. The winners of the three categories were eleven-year-old Lucy Boycott from Cheshire (UK) who created a painting while she was a patient at the local Whiston Hospital, The Silesian Rehabilitation Centre in Poland which submitted a series of photographs highlighting teamwork, and St. Ives Nursery in Cambridgeshire (UK) where the youngsters devised a collage incorporating their own hand prints.

Diversey Care has developed a range of documents, guidelines, posters and related items which, with additional material developed by the WHO such as the Five Moments of Hand Hygiene, can all be accessed and downloaded for free at www.diversey.com/handsonmyheart.