Hand Hygiene for All Global Initiative

Overview

The Hand Hygiene for All Global Initiative is led by WHO and UNICEF. It aims to implement WHO’s global recommendations on hand hygiene to prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic and work to ensure lasting infrastructure and behavior. It calls for countries to lay out comprehensive roadmaps to ensure hand hygiene is a mainstay beyond the pandemic. It also proposes a framework for coordination and collaboration among global and regional partners, with the primary aim of supporting and growing country-led efforts and investments.

The Global Initiative is designed around three stages: Responding to the immediate pandemic, Rebuilding infrastructure and services, and Reimagining hand hygiene in society. Each stage has three core dimensions: creating an institutional and policy environment that enables progress, ensuring the availability of hand hygiene stations, alcohol based hand rubs, soap and water, and drawing on evidence-based behaviour change approaches to encourage sustained hand hygiene practices. The Global Initiative is working with a number of partners to further progress in specific settings, including health care facilities, schools and child-care centres, workplaces, transport hubs, households, institutions and places of worship.