Evaluation of the short-term and long-term effect of a short series of hand hygiene campaigns on improving adherence in a tertiary care hospital in India.

Hand hygiene compliance at our institution was monitored by direct observation before and after a series of 2 hand hygiene awareness campaigns across an18-month time period to analyze the effect of these campaigns. A total of 5,059 opportunities for hand hygiene were observed. Compliance increased from 28.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 18.7%-43.2%) to 42.5% (95% CI, 30.7%-54.8%) after the 2 campaigns (P < .0001) but dropped to 36.4% (95% CI, 30.5%-44.5%) after 2 years (P < .001). Three of the 8 intensive care units that showed a significant increase after the campaigns did not maintain the increased compliance at 2 years' follow-up. We conclude that educational programs should be repeatedly conducted to maintain high adherence to hand hygiene standards in health care settings.