Safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene are crucial to human health and well-being. Safe WASH is not only a prerequisite to health, but contributes to livelihoods, school attendance and dignity and helps to create resilient communities living in healthy environments.
Personal hygiene Hygiene is multi-faceted and comprises many behaviours, including hand- and face washing, menstrual hygiene and food hygiene. Hand washing with soap at crucial events such as after visiting the toilet, defecating or before preparing food was estimated to be a poorly practised behaviour globally.
This report focuses on global and national efforts and progress to improve water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), cleaning and health care waste management in health care facilities
Hand hygiene is therefore the most important measure to avoid the transmission of harmful germs and prevent health care-associated infections. This brochure explains how and when to practice hand hygiene.
Promote optimal hand hygiene practices (using the appropriate technique and according to the WHO 5 Moments) and the times for appropriate glove use within the health care workflow. Promote inclusion of hand hygiene within national IPC strategies, as well as standard operating procedures (SOPs) at facility level, according to the recommendations of the WHO global action plan and monitoring ...
A large proportion of avoidable infections acquired during health care delivery could still be prevented with hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) action at the right times. This provides a high return on investment for health systems and countries. In this 18th year of the WHO world hand hygiene day, we call on those providing and supporting health care to refresh their ...