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Guidelines on hand hygiene in community settings

UN Childrens Fund UNICEF; World Health Organization WHO (2025) C_WHO

On Global Handwashing Day, WHO and UNICEF have released the first-ever global Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Community Settings to support governments and ... practitioners in promoting effective hand hygiene outside health care – across households, public spaces and institutions. Framing hand hygiene as a public good and a government responsibility, the Guidelines translate evidence into ready-to-adopt actions that enable sustainable access to effective hygiene services. This will reduce diarrhoeal disease, acute respiratory infections and other preventable illnesses, strengthening routine public health where people live, work, visit and study, and emergency preparedness, including outbreaks like cholera. Despite clear benefits, 1.7 billion people still lacked basic hand hygiene services at home in 2024, including 611 million with no facility at all. Meeting the 2030 target will require accelerated progress – about a doubling in the global rate, and much faster in specific settings (up to 11-fold in least-developed countries and 8-fold in fragile contexts). Hand hygiene remains one of the most cost-effective health investments, reducing diarrhoea by 30% and acute respiratory infections by 17%, with large, measurable gains for population health. “Clean hands save lives, but results at scale require policy, financing and accountability,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, Director a.i, Department of Environment, Climate Change, One Health & Migration at the World Health Organization. “These Guidelines help countries move beyond fragmented projects to government-led systems that make soap, water, and conditions conducive to everyday hand hygiene the norm.” “Children and young people pay the highest price when basic hygiene is out of reach,” said Cecilia Scharp, Director, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Team, Programme Group, UNICEF. “These Guidelines provide practical steps to ensure facilities are accessible when they need to be – in homes, schools, markets, and transport hubs – so every child can learn, play and thrive with dignity.” more

External Link

Guideline & Policy (Bengali) - Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of Bangladesh, Directorate General of Health Services

Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of Bangladesh, Directorate General of Health Services Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of Bangladesh, Directorate General of Health Services (2020) C2

গাইডলাইন ও নীতিমালাসমূহ Accessed: 17.04.2020 Here you can download different guidelines and policies in Bangla

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