--Photo Save the Children International in Laos

Making handwashing possible in Laos

An assessment conducted between December 2025 and June 2026 as part of the rollout of the Safe, Clean, Green and Climate-Resilient Health Care Facility initiative found that only three of the 69 health centres met the full standard for clean, functional handwashing stations with soap and water at essential locations.
The assessment covered 25 remote, climate-vulnerable districts across seven provinces. The findings highlight a pressing need to make hand hygiene possible wherever care is delivered.​
For children and families, handwashing with soap is a simple and effective way to prevent illness. Yet knowing its importance is not enough when water, soap or functioning facilities are unavailable.
Global Handwashing Day on October 15, with the campaign theme of “Be a Handwashing Hero!”, should inspire a practical commitment in Laos – support daily habits with reliable services and sustained investment. Hand hygiene must be treated as an essential part of safe care.
Clean hands protect patients and communities
The benefits of hand hygiene are substantial. WHO and UNICEF’s 2025 guidance reports that hand hygiene interventions in community settings can reduce diarrhoeal disease by around 30 percent and acute respiratory infections by around 17 percent. These findings come from wider research, rather than measured reductions in Laos, but they demonstrate the value of making handwashing with soap part of everyday life.
In health facilities, the implications are particularly important. WHO reports that hand hygiene improvement programmes can prevent up to 50 percent of avoidable infections acquired during health care delivery. Achieving these benefits requires functioning facilities and reliable supplies alongside training, monitoring and consistent practice. Installing a handwashing station is a starting point; ensuring that health workers can clean their hands at the right moments is what makes it protective.
For children and families, preventing infection can mean fewer treatment expenses, fewer missed school days and less disruption to livelihoods. For health centres, it supports safer care. These benefits strengthen the case for treating hand hygiene as a routine service with a dedicated budget and clear responsibility. The gaps identified in the assessment should, therefore, guide practical improvements wherever patients, caregivers and health workers need to clean their hands.
Turning assessment findings into safer and hygienic care
Save the Children is working closely with the Ministry of Health to roll out the Safe, Clean, Green and Climate-Resilient Health Care Facility initiative. Its framework of 26 indicators for health centres provides a practical way to identify service gaps and guide improvements. The assessment helps facility teams and their partners decide where support is most urgently needed.
Indicator number 14 makes the handwashing requirement concrete. It calls for clean, functional stations with soap and water in consultation and care rooms, including delivery, maternal and child health, vaccination and outpatient rooms; areas for changing personal protective equipment; within five metres of toilets; waiting areas; and waste treatment and storage areas. Meeting this standard means ensuring access across these essential locations.
Floods, drought and extreme weather are the major threats to the Lao health system. ​Disruption to water and sanitation can make hygiene harder to maintain precisely when communities need protection. Reliable handwashing services, therefore, belong to climate preparedness and facility improvement plans.
The Ministry of Health, Save the Children and WHO are collaborating through the Green Climate Fund-supported Strengthening Climate Resilience of Laos Health System project. This project aims to support 100 health facilities and 250 communities through stronger infrastructure, health worker capacity, early warning, and community awareness.
This provides an opportunity to address the handwashing gaps identified by the assessment and strengthen the ability of facilities to maintain hygiene during climate-related disruption.
Fund the services that last
Health centres must balance hygiene needs with other essential services and supplies. With limited budgets, improvements need to be carefully prioritised. A new handwashing station is a useful investment, but its protective value depends on reliable water, regular soap supplies, drainage and timely repairs.
We should, therefore, budget for the continuing cost of keeping facilities usable. Training and supervision also need support so that accessible stations translate into consistent hand hygiene during care. A facility improvement plan that covers construction alone leaves these everyday needs unresolved.
This does not mean waiting until every centre can meet the entire standard at once. It means planning progressive improvements, prioritising essential locations and ensuring that each investment can be made. The Ministry of Health, local authorities and development partners should judge success by whether services remain functional and available when needed.
Practical improvement plan for each health centre
Each health centre should develop a costed plan identifying missing or non-functional handwashing stations, the supplies required and a realistic timetable for improvement. Facility managers should assign responsibility for checking water, soap, drainage and cleanliness, with a clear process for reporting and resolving problems.
District and provincial health teams should support these plans through supervision and follow-up assessments. Monitoring should track whether stations remain usable in all required locations and whether staff practise hand hygiene at the appropriate moments during care. Patients and caregivers should have an opportunity to report difficulties with accessing facilities.
The Ministry of Health and development partners should use these findings to direct support where gaps are greatest. Improvement plans should include arrangements to maintain water and supplies during climate-related disruption, making hand hygiene part of both routine care and emergency preparedness.
Make clean hands possible every day
Global Handwashing Day should be a moment to commit to improvements that last throughout the year. The assessment has identified gaps; the Ministry of Health, local authorities and development partners now have an opportunity to turn those findings into better conditions for safe care.
This work also advances Sustainable Development Goal target 6.2, which calls for adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, with particular attention to women, girls and people in vulnerable situations.
To “Be a Handwashing Hero” is to help make good hygiene possible. This October 15, let us commit the resources, responsibility and continuing attention that health centres need. Every child, caregiver and health worker should be able to clean their hands whenever and wherever care requires it.
--The author is Kuber Adhikari, Health System Advisor for Strengthening Climate Resilience of the Lao PDR Health System Project, Save the Children International in Laos.
Thephakon Sisoulath, Senior Communications Coordinator for Strengthening Climate Resilience of the Lao PDR Health System Project, Save the Children International in Laos, provides editorial support and photo curation.
The views don’t necessarily reflect those of Vientiane Times.

By Addvertorial Desk
 (Latest Update October 15, 2026)