In November, the GHP co-hosted a Handwashing Roundtable in Abuja along with WSSCC, the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, and the National Task Group on Sanitation. The meeting convened diverse stakeholders in support of handwashing programs and to discuss the next steps for handwashing impact in Nigeria. The objective of the meeting was to incorporate the strategies discussed to increase the practice of handwashing through the Clean Nigeria Campaign. The Ministry’s Director, Water Quality and Sanitation, Mr. Emmanuel Awe reassured that the Ministry will continue to mainstream handwashing in all sanitation programs and encouraged those in attendance to incorporate a handwashing mindset throughout their programs.

The GHP website serves as a knowledge hub, sharing evidence and resources on handwashing and hand hygiene programming. Throughout this year, we published new resources such as webinar summaries, event reports, research summaries, and different posts around handwashing integration. Check out our resource hub for all things handwashing!

This year, the GHP led an advocacy campaign focused on hand hygiene in healthcare facilities. As part of the campaign, we launched a series of hand hygiene leader profiles, sharing stories from people leading efforts to improve hand hygiene in their facilities. We also developed a Hand Hygiene in Health Care advocacy pack that can be used to support your planning and advocacy activities to accelerate hand hygiene efforts in healthcare settings. There was a key success for hand hygiene at this year’s World Health Assembly with the passing of the WASH in healthcare facilities resolution (EB144.R5). This resolution is the first time the 194 WHO Member States have joined together to publicly acknowledge and encourage concrete action regarding the global health crisis of the lack of WASH in healthcare facilities!

With a yearlong theme of "Leave no one behind," the Global Handwashing Partnership and its partners presented evidence around handwashing behavior change at key conferences and events. We hosted 3 events at Stockholm World Water Week focus on handwashing as it relates to nutrition, health, and emergency settings. At the UNC Water and Health Conference, GHP co-convened 2 side sessions on user-centered design for handwashign stations and nudges as a handwashing behavior change intervention. 

The GHP leads Global Handwashing Day every year. This year's tagline, Clean Hands for All, emphasized the importance of handwashing equity and leaving no one behind in our handwashing efforts. We developed new resources and refreshed the Global Handwashing Day website, making it easier for celebrants to find the tools they need to advocate for clean hands for all. Global Handwashing Day has reached over 395 million people and we are still counting! If you haven’t submitted your campaign results, please fill out our reporting form here.