Guidelines on hand hygiene in community settings

15 October 2025

| Guideline

Overview

These Guidelines are concerned with the practice of hand hygiene to protect community health outcomes, in particular, the reduction of diarrhoeal diseases and acute respiratory infections.

The focus is on hand hygiene in non-health care settings, collectively referred to as community settings. Community settings are defined as those where health care is not routinely delivered. They include three broad domains: domestic (households), public and institutional settings.

The recommendations are relevant and implementable in any resource context. They are particularly relevant to long-term development contexts, complementing existing recommendations on hand hygiene in acute humanitarian response settings available through the Sphere standards for promotion of water, sanitation and hygiene. The Guidelines are intended for use in a routine health system context to improve population health, and also during health emergencies, as part of broader response strategies.

These guidelines reflect the best available evidence, published in a dedicated supplement of the BMJ Global Health peer-reviewed journal.