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Global guidance on WASH in health care facilities. Also available in AR, FR, SP, RUS

The global reference document for standards on WASH in health care facilities.

The topic of safe and resilient water and sanitation systems and plumbing in health care facilities was an important focus of the recent 2023 World Plumbing Council Congress, an organization... Read more »

the guidelines identified in this guideline shall contribute to the attainment of the country’s goals towards sustainable development, climate action and universal health care. The development of the Guidelines of... Read more »

The Green and Safe Health Facilities Manual details environmental considerations for all health facilities. The standards and criteria in this manual are aimed at enhancing patient safety through improved indoor... Read more »

These guidelines include standards of WASH and waste services in healthcare facilities in Uganda, the documents also outline how to budget on facility levels for WASH and Waste in healthcare... Read more »

This document accompanies the Zambia minimum standards for WASH and IPC.

The COVID-19 Waste Management Sourcebook has been developed to supplement the existing DOH Health Care Waste Management Manual 4th Edition in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. This Sourcebook incorporates the Philippine policy issuances and guidelines developed in response to COVID-19 as well as relevant international standards.

WASH PRESS focuses on providing technical solutions to meet the water, sanitation and hygiene needs of health facilities during health emergency and disaster preparedness activities or in resource-constrained contexts. The document is the result of a systematic review of numerous technical guidelines, practices and tools from the World Health Organization and other relevant institutions and universities in the sector. In a single tool, it combines the minimum standards and indicators to be met with technical solutions to achieve them, with an emphasis on what needs to be done (algorithms), how to do it (factsheets) and how much is needed (calculation tools). By publishing this document, the Pan American Health Organization aims to facilitate decision-making by those responsible for health facilities and for the planning and implementation of water, sanitation and hygiene measures, as well as immediate and timely action by health and auxiliary staff and, in general, by professionals in the sector. This publication complements the guidance provided in the WASH FIT Health Facility Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement Toolkit, developed by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund in 2018.

When assessing WASH in healthcare facility surveys, tasks such as cleaning and analyzing the data, and reporting back to facilities can be time-consuming and/or require unavailable expertise. This tool was created to address those tasks as part of The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development's initiative to evaluate WASH in 150 of its healthcare facilities and provide support. It has since been adapted so that others could use it for data analysis and reporting. These tools evaluate a quick WASH in healthcare facility survey (~45 minutes) to assess which facilities meet basic JMP standards, and create reports that highlight each facilities' Strengths, what issues could be addressed without additional funding (Minor Issues to Resolve), and what issues require additional funding to resolve (Major Issues to Resolve). These reports and the next steps document should be sent to each facility, and may also be helpful when seeking funding. These tools are available for both R and Excel, in both English and French. The R version automatically produces facility reports, and the Excel version provides all prompts that need to be pasted into the reports. The Excel version is recommended for organizations evaluating less healthcare facilities (e.g. <20), and the R version is recommended for organizations evaluating many facilities. Prior experience with R is not required. Descriptions of how to use the tools and what files are provided are in the intro tab for the Excel tool, and the file titled README Guide to Using the Tool.docx. If you have any questions about these tools, please contact stephenpathilton@gmail.com.