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The GHP Soapbox

As 2020 draws to a close, we would like to acknowledge this momentous year for hand hygiene. The global pandemic provides a unique impetus to institutionalize hand hygiene as a mainstay in public health interventions. However, we know that we must continue to champion hand hygiene at all levels. In our final newsletter of the year, we reflect on the many activities to drive progress toward our vision of handwashing with soap being universally recognized, promoted, and practiced.

2020 Activity Highlights
WASH Viruses Away Campaign

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Handwashing Partnership (GHP) launched the WASH Viruses Away campaign with key handwashing messages and resources. The campaign seeks to bridge short-term hand hygiene prioritization for COVID-19 response and longer-term habit formation. As part of this campaign, we launched a COVID-19 landing page on the GHP website. The landing page served as a central platform to view handwashing and COVID-19 resources, including this handwashing poster co-created by the GHP and its partners. We also developed guidance briefs on key hand hygiene issues (available here and here) and used this as an opportunity to reach out to key stakeholders to prioritize hand hygiene beyond the pandemic.

Rx Hand Hygiene Campaign

The recent JMP progress report on WASH in healthcare facilities highlights the consistent gaps in basic hand hygiene services in healthcare facilities. Based on the new report, 1 in 3 do not have adequate facilities to clean hands where care is provided. To this end, the Global Handwashing Partnership continued its Rx Hand Hygiene campaign to highlight solutions and address barriers to proper hand hygiene in healthcare facilities. We continued our Hand Hygiene Profiles Series, highlighting leaders promoting hand hygiene across different health care settings. In partnership with Emory’s Center for Global Safe WASH, we hosted a webinar focused on facilitating clean hands in healthcare facilities in the context of COVID-19. Overall, this campaign serves as an important opportunity to engage the health sector and ensure proper hand hygiene as part of clean and safe care.

Global Handwashing Day

Every year, we lead the planning, facilitation, and reporting of Global Handwashing Day on October 15. This year’s Global Handwashing Day theme was Hand Hygiene for All in alignment with the WHO/UNICEF-led Hand Hygiene for All Global Initiative. While Global Handwashing Day serves as an important platform for awareness raising, this year’s Global Handwashing Day also served as an important opportunity to gather leader commitments to accelerate progress toward hand hygiene for all. This year’s Global Handwashing Day reached over 430 million people and counting through social media and virtual campaigns alone. This is a 60% increase in social media reach than 2019!

The Global Handwashing Partnership continues to collect Global Handwashing Day reports. If you haven’t done so, please submit your Global Handwashing Day outcomes here.

Handwashing Handbook

The GHP launched the Handwashing Handbook, an all-in-one resource for handwashing and hand hygiene programming. The handbook covers making the case for handwashing, designing and implementing handwashing programs, improving handwashing in specific contexts, and addressing handwashing at a systems level. To amplify the Handwashing Handbook, we hosted a bi-weekly Handwashing Thursday Series, diving deeper into the handbook’s topics. We also developed a Handwashing Handbook landing page that includes related resources and an online forum to further your hand hygiene discussions. Visit the Handwashing Handbook landing page and download the Handwashing Handbook here.

Country Support

While the Global Handwashing Partnership serves as a global advocate and knowledge hub, we know that handwashing prioritization and action must happen at the country-level. This year, we have strengthened our in-country engagement through our partners. The Global Handwashing Partnership, in collaboration with the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Water Resources and WSSCC, continued to prioritize handwashing through the Clean Nigeria Campaign. Through this collaboration, we supported a handwashing situational analysis, which will help drive future hand hygiene action in Nigeria. We also supported the development of several hand hygiene campaigns in the United Kingdom in partnership with Unilever and supported initial meetings of the World Bank Hand Hygiene Accelerator, which focuses on several countries to prioritize hand hygiene. As we continue our handwashing efforts, we are excited to strengthen our engagement in partner countries and ensure hand hygiene is prioritized at all levels.

Moving Forward

In 2021, the Global Handwashing Partnership will continue our commitment to serve as a knowledge hub and prominent global actor for handwashing to accelerate progress toward hand hygiene for all. Likewise, as a core partner of the Hand Hygiene for All Global Initiative, we commit to coordinating with other core partners to leverage the many efforts done in 2020 and ensuring hand hygiene remains a mainstay in public health interventions beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. To learn more about the partnership’s activities and priorities, visit the Global Handwashing Partnership website. To learn how to get involved, please e-mail the Secretariat team at contact@globalhandwashing.org.

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