WHO/UNICEF Report Reveals Major Gaps in WASH Services Across Health-Care Facilities Worldwide

Geneva, September 3, 2026 — A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has revealed significant gaps in essential water, sanitation, hygiene and environmental health services in health-care facilities worldwide, with basic sanitation and environmental cleaning emerging as the weakest links in an otherwise mixed global picture.

Background

Reliable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are fundamental to safe, quality health care — supporting infection prevention, patient dignity, and the safety of health workers. Yet tracking global progress across all core WASH service areas in health-care settings has historically been limited, making it difficult for governments and health systems to identify where investment is most urgently needed.

“Progress on water, sanitation, hygiene, environmental cleaning and waste management in health-care facilities 2015–2025” addresses this gap. Published through the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP), the report provides the first global estimates covering all five basic service areas — water, sanitation, hygiene, environmental cleaning and waste management — offering the most comprehensive picture to date of WASH conditions in health-care facilities over the past decade.

Key Findings

The report’s 2025 estimates reveal uneven progress across the five service areas:

• 85 per cent of health-care facilities had a basic water service
• 72 per cent had basic hygiene services
• 71 per cent had basic waste management services
• 59 per cent met the basic standard for environmental cleaning
• Just 40 per cent met requirements for basic sanitation

The report also identified persistent gaps in services critical to patient dignity and inclusivity: only around half of facilities had sex-separated toilets, accessible toilets, or facilities for menstrual hygiene management. Perhaps most striking, around one in ten facilities still had no water service at all, and a similar proportion had no sanitation service whatsoever — underscoring that even the most basic WASH infrastructure remains out of reach for a meaningful share of health-care settings globally.

Call for Stronger Monitoring

The report calls for stronger routine monitoring of service reliability, safety, accessibility and cleanliness in health-care facilities, alongside closer attention to whether these services genuinely meet the needs of both patients and health workers. This shift toward monitoring not just the presence of infrastructure, but its functionality and adequacy, reflects a growing recognition that access alone does not guarantee safe or dignified care.

Conclusion

The findings paint a sobering picture of the state of WASH services in health-care facilities a decade into global monitoring efforts, with basic sanitation, environmental cleaning, and inclusive facilities such as menstrual hygiene management lagging well behind water access. As health systems worldwide continue to grapple with infection control, patient safety, and health worker protection, the report’s call for stronger, more consistent monitoring signals that closing these gaps will require sustained investment and accountability — not just infrastructure, but the systems needed to ensure it functions reliably where it matters most.

Download the full “Progress on water, sanitation, hygiene, environmental cleaning and waste management in health-care facilities 2015–2025”.