Universal access to hand hygiene
All households in the world's 46 least developed countries could have handwashing facilities by 2030 if the world invested less than US$1 per person per year in hand hygiene. This would provide basic protection against diseases, avert future outbreaks and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) launched their 2021 State of the World's Hand Hygiene report on Global Handwashing Day. The report highlighted that promoting handwashing with soap at home costs governments only 2.5 per cent of average government health expenditure in these countries, making it a highly cost-effective investment that provides enormous health benefits for mere pennies.
The report gathered dispersed data sets on hand hygiene access and underlying national policies and investments to highlight lagging progress; and calls member states and supporting agencies to action, offering numerous inspiring examples of change.
Hand hygiene, one of the first lines of defence against the spread of infectious diseases, remains out of reach for billions of people who still lack hand hygiene facilities at home, school, or health care facilities. Globally, three in ten people, or 2.3 billion, lack a handwashing facility with water and soap at home. In addition, 818 million children lacked a handwashing facility with soap and water at school in 2020. Also, health workers in one in three healthcare facilities lacked hand hygiene facilities at the points at which they provide care, placing them all at preventable risk of disease even at the best of times. Almost two billion people depend on health care facilities that don't even have basic water services.
Ramping up action to ensure universal access to hand hygiene facilities is one clear example of the complementarity of getting out of the pandemic, preparing for the next one, and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. It is certainly a requirement of universal health coverage. Achieving the goal of universal access to hand hygiene will require a dramatic change of gear; the current average pace of progress would have to quadruple to ensure all homes in the world have this access. The same applies to universal access to hand hygiene services in schools by 2030, requiring at least a four-fold increase in the current average rate of progress, with greater acceleration needed in some areas. If current rates of progress continue, by 2030, the world will have reached only 78 per cent coverage of basic hygiene services, leaving 1.9 billion people without the facilities to wash their hands at home.
To speed up progress, governments should prioritise five key actions:
• Good governance through leadership, effective coordination and regulation, including clear policies on handwashing services and behaviours in all settings.
• Smart public finance ensures maximum impact and stimulates investments from households and the private sector.
• Assess current capacity for their hand hygiene policy and strategies, identify gaps and develop a capacity-building system based on the rigorous application of best practice.
• Governments should address the need for consistent data on hand hygiene to inform decision-making and make investments strategic.
• Governments and supporting agencies should encourage innovation, particularly in the private sector, to implement hand hygiene in all settings.
Handwashing is one of the most effective methods for removing germs, avoiding illness, and preventing the spread of germs to others.
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