[Hand hygiene: basic, but not trivial]

Hand hygiene is considered as the pillar of infection control and prevention. Healthcare-associated infections have a great impact on morbidity, length of hospital stay, and treatment costs. Hand disinfection is considered to be the single most effective tool to prevent healthcare-associated infections and cross-transmission of multi-drug resistant bacteria. The WHO defined "5 moments" for hand hygiene and highlighted the need for new strategies to improve everyday hand hygiene practices on the basis of the current low compliance. Reasons for non-compliance are multifaceted and behavioural, religious, and sociocultural aspects have to be considered when designing intervention programs. Despite all these barriers it is worth the effort to aim at quality of care improvement.