The Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with soap (PPPHW) works to bring greater attention to handwashing as a key public intervention. Today, the PPPHW is present in 15 countries across four continents.

Before 2001 and the Creation of the PPPHW:

The PPPHW took its first steps following the implementation of two large-scale handwashing promotion programs:

- Programma Saniya, implemented in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, showed that careful consumer research at the outset of a handwashing promotion program results in better targeted program activities and therefore, greater levels of handwashing behavior change. The Ministry of Health and Community Groups promoted behavior change by encouraging mothers to wash their hands with water and soap after changing diapers. During a period of three years, the program averted some 9,000 diarrhea episodes, 800 outpatient and 100 deaths – at a cost of 0.30 $ per inhabitant.

- The Central American Handwashing for Diarrheal Disease Prevention Program demonstrated that working with a broad partnership of public and private sector stakeholders with a mutual interest in increasing handwashing with soap was an effective approach to promoting hygiene behavior change on a large scale .  The program also highlighted the need to focus on the one behavior with largest potential health impact – handwashing with soap – and to promote it with cost-effective, consumer-centered marketing. In collaboration with the public sector, four private companies launched handwashing campaigns in Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. The initiative sought to improve handwashing rates to reduce diarrheal disease in children under five.

2002 – 2007: Launch of pilot programs:  

The PPPHW secured funding to pilot and collect lessons learned from handwashing promotion programs in Ghana, Senegal, and Peru.

The PPPHW’s advocacy work and the results from the three pilot programs led to the establishment of public-private partnerships for handwashing in 12 additional countries: Benin, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Panama, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam.

In December 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed resources to carry out large-scale handwashing promotion programs in four countries: Peru, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam. The project is testing whether innovative promotional approaches can generate widespread and sustained increases in handwashing with soap at critical times and it draws extensively on the lessons learned in the pilot countries.

October 15, 2008: First Global Handwashing Day

The PPPHW organized the first Global Handwashing Day mobilizing millions of people to wash their hands with soap in more than 80 countries worldwide.