Good hand hygiene is a highly cost-effective public health measure, and a cornerstone of safe and effective health care. It is crucial to protecting against a range of diseases, stopping the transmission of COVID-19, and preventing other outbreak-related diseases. It is also critical to combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The Hand Hygiene for All Global Initiative 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. This WHO and UNICEF-led initiative calls for countries to lay out comprehensive roadmaps that bridge together national COVID-19 preparedness and response plans with mid- and long-term national development plans to ensure hand hygiene is a mainstay beyond the pandemic, as part of infection prevention and control (IPC) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) efforts. 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 four core dimensions: securing political leadership to embed a culture of hand hygiene, strengthening the institutional and policy environment to drive progress, ensuring the availability of hand hygiene stations, alcohol-based hand rubs and soap and water where they are needed, 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, such as health care facilities (including primary and long-term settings), schools and child-care centres, workplaces, transport hubs, households, institutions and places of worship. In health care, it builds upon and supports existing programmes such as the WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands global campaign and the WASH in health care facilities initiatives.