BACKGROUND :

Quality of care is now considered core to transformative national action required for UHC. A range of quality interventions have been well defined, all of which necessitate basics such as WASH. In 2018, WHO and UNICEF released the first global baseline report on WASH in health care facilities and found that one in four health care facilities (26%) lacked basic water services, one in five (21%) had no sanitation service and 2 in 5 facilities (42%) lack hand hygiene facilities at the point of care. To address this alarming quality gap in basic services in health facilities, countries are integrating WASH within national directions on quality of care. This side event will share progress on how Cambodia’s national quality of care efforts have addressed WASH. It will also examine how WHO has been working to support similar WASH integration in Ethiopia and Ghana. Successful approaches to embedding WASH within quality will be discussed providing practical country examples of what will be required to ensure all quality efforts are designed to focus first on fundamental basics of care in universal WASH in all health care facilities. Key technical resources that have been developed by the WHO Quality Taskforce to support national efforts are also described.