Hygiene refers to the practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases. While good hygiene is primarily about behaviours, the ability to practise them well is supported by having the appropriate infrastructure in place, such as access to clean water and soap.
Poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) increases death rates and ill health, creates greater demand for healthcare interventions, widens social inequalities, and has repercussions for quality of life and the wider economy.
There are two main transmission routes for infection—the faecal-oral and respiratory pathways—and hygiene measures work by disrupting them.
Attaining good hygiene is complex, and it is becoming increasingly clear that a more holistic approach is needed that engages and empowers local populations, and is locally sensitive and sustainable.
The life-course approach, which has its origins in preventing or reducing the impact of non-communicable diseases through encouraging good behaviours while recognising the contribution of other factors, including environmental ones, could provide a useful framework for communicable disease and hygiene. Looking at hygiene through a life-course lens could form part of a smarter approach that embeds good hygiene behaviour from childhood (to gain the most cumulative benefit), and then reinforces it throughout a person’s lifetime to boost good hygiene practices if these start to wane.
