Year 2025 World Hand Hygiene Day
Theme: “It might be gloves. It’s always hand hygiene.”
Good day
Esteemed colleagues, Heads of Department and Environmental Health Officers, Colleagues, and all dedicated Health Professionals.
Today, we unite to commemorate The International Hand Hygiene Day 2025, under the global theme:
“It might be gloves. It’s always hand hygiene.”
This message is more than a slogan; it's a crucial reminder that no matter the protective equipment we wear, the foundation of infection prevention remains the same: clean hands!
As the Director of Environmental Health Services for Lagos State Health District 1, I have vividly seen firsthand how the simple act of proper hand hygiene can be the strongest barrier between health and harm. In healthcare, lodging and boarding facilities, schools, markets, homes, and other public spaces, hand hygiene remains our most accessible and effective public health tool.
The year 2025 focus is clear:
Gloves do not replace hand hygiene.
Hand hygiene is not optional but very essential before, during, and after glove use.
Unfortunately, in many settings, gloves are misused as a substitute for proper handwashing or sanitizing. This creates a false sense of protection, increasing the risk of contamination.
Clean hands must remain non-negotiable (before putting on gloves and after removing them).
Our responsibilities as Environmental /Public Health leaders are threefold:
- Strengthen systems that support consistent hand hygiene in all sectors.
- Ensure access to water, soap, and alcohol-based hand rubs, especially in high-risk environments like health care facilities where patients droop in for treatments of various ailments, ranging from highly infectious ones, like Lassa fever, diarrheal diseases, and diphtheria, to non-infectious ones.
- Aggressive education and sensitization of all societal groups, from healthcare workers to food vendors, on the importance of hand hygiene regardless of glove use. If we could recall that aggressive sensitization and implementation of hand hygiene practices were applied to put the COVID-19 pandemic at bay.
On this day, I call on all stakeholders, government agencies, facility managers, front-line health workers, and citizens to reaffirm their commitment:
- To promote clean hands,
- To model correct hygiene practices,
- And to never allow gloves to become a shortcut or an excuse.
Thank you, and let us continue to lead by example.
Onikoyi T.M
DEHS, LSHD 1
05/05/2025
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