A comprehensive book focusing on hand hygiene for infection control and patient safety will be published sometime in December.

Hand Hygiene: A Handbook for Medical Professionals, was developed by world scholars and clinicians to be an essential resource for all medical professionals, including healthcare staff, infection control preventionists and nurses, and patient safety experts, to name a few.

The book, which fully integrates Word Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and policies, offers a global perspective in tackling hand hygiene issues in developed and developing countries.

Chapters delve into basic and complex clinical applications of hand hygiene practices, along with issues such as religious and cultural aspects and patient participation. Research also looks at barriers to compliance and hand hygiene best practices, while providing guidance and marketing advice at the individual, institutional and organization levels for national and worldwide hygiene promotion campaigns.

Authors include Didier Pittet, pre-eminent scholar on hand hygiene and professor of medicine and hospital epidemiology at the University of Geneva, John Boyce, clinical professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine and Benedetta Allegranzi, specialist in infectious diseases, tropical medicine, infection prevention and control and hospital epidemiology. She currently works at WHO, leading the “Clean Care is Safer Care” program.