WHO CALLS FOR GLOBAL INVESTMENT IN HAND HYGIENE IN UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES

Sat 16 October 2021:

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday that a global investment of just $1 per person per year in hand hygiene might avert thousands of deaths in developing countries.

“All households in the world’s 46 least developed countries could have handwashing facilities by 2030 if the world invested less than $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 WHO said.

The promotion of handwashing with soap at home costs 2.5% of an average health budget per year, making it “a highly cost-effective investment, providing outsized health benefits for relatively little cost,” the organization explained, citing the latest State of The World’s Hand Hygiene report by the WHO and UNICEF.

Globally, 3 in 10 people, or 2.3 billion, lack a handwashing facility with water and soap at home; 818 million children lack a handwashing facility with soap and water at school in 2020, and health workers in 1 in 3 healthcare facilities lack 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 2 billion people depend on health care facilities that don’t even have basic water services.

It warned that only 78% of humanity will have access to basic hand hygiene services by 2030 if the problem is not properly addressed, which means that 1.9 billion people will not have the facilities to wash their hands at home.

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