July 7, 2022

The Global Handwashing Partnership is thrilled to announce the theme of this year’s Global Handwashing Day, “Unite for Universal Hand Hygiene.”

According to the latest WHO/UNICEF JMP Report, we must quadruple current rates of progress to achieve the hygiene targets highlighted under Sustainable Development Goals 6. Leveraging the learnings from recent years, the time to accelerate hand hygiene progress is now – and it requires a collective effort to enact real change. As the world moves beyond COVID-19 to our new normal, we must unite for universal hand hygiene. This Global Handwashing Day, we call on:

• Governments to promote national hand hygiene efforts, such as the development of a costed hand hygiene roadmap, that consider a combination of policy, public financing, capacity building, and innovation to accelerate hand hygiene;
• Donors to ensure sustained hand hygiene financing by investing in programs that are hygiene sensitive, promote behavior change, and lead to hand hygiene habits;
• Businesses to support affordable, accessible, and desirable hand hygiene solutions to ensure supplies are available for everyone, including their own workforce;
• Institutions to prioritize hand hygiene infrastructure and policies within schools, healthcare facilities, workplaces, and other institutional settings;
• Researchers to conduct further research to fill in hand hygiene evidence gaps, with focus on hand hygiene costs and return on investment as well as process evaluations for hand hygiene interventions; and
• Advocates to raise awareness on the importance of hand hygiene as an essential part of health and development to influence political and community buy in.

Join us on October 15 as we unite for universal hand hygiene. For more information, please visit the Global Handwashing Day website here.

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