The 2021 Global Handwashing Day theme is ‘Our Future is at Hand – Let’s Move Forward Together’. The unprecedented nature of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to highlight the critical role hand hygiene playsin disease transmission. Therefore, this year’s theme is a call to action which asks us to leverage experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to address the historic neglect of hand hygiene investments, policies, and programmes once and for all.
As we enter a new normal beyond COVID-19,the future state of hygiene is in our hands. A lot has been learned about promoting hand hygiene at scale, but much work is needed for the current momentum to be sustained. This fact sheet summarises the latest evidence around hand hygiene and translates this into advocacy messages and programmatic actions to guide your future hygiene work.
