The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented emphasis on hand hygiene, which is crucial in preventing the pandemic. Practicing hand hygiene can prevent the spread of infectious diseases, such as diarrhea and respiratory diseases like COVID-19. However, the act of cleaning hands effectively or encouraging the habit is not seen in many places due to the lack of facilities.

Meanwhile, Target 6.2 of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, with one of its measuring indicators being "the percentage of the population with basic handwashing facilities at home." Target 6.2 is supervised by World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"The percentage of the population with basic handwashing facilities at home" refers to the proportion of people living in a household with handwashing facilities, particularly soap (block soap, liquid soap, laundry detergent powder, soapy water, etc.) and water (a sink, faucet, water jug, or basin with tap water provided). In 2020, countries with less than 30% of the population having handwashing facilities at home were mostly located in sub-Saharan Africa. These countries included the Republic of Rwanda, with only 4.6% of people having handwashing facilities at home, Haiti (22.4%), Bolivia (26.9%), Timor-Leste (28.4%) in Asia, and Papua New Guinea (29.8%) in Oceania. Among the 7.8 billion people in the world in 2020, 5.5 billion (71%) had basic handwashing facilities at home; 1.6 billion (21%) lacked such basic facilities, and 670 million (9%) had none at all.

Hand hygiene is essential in strengthening primary health care, universal health coverage, and disease control while being a highly cost-effective investment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, hand hygiene was also adopted by most governments as one of their basic public health measures. Reflecting this, WHO declared May 5 as World Hand Hygiene Day to call for the world to support hand hygiene. Governments should lead the public policy advocacy on hand hygiene. In this case, the governments should first ensure easy access to water and then, aided with relevant regulatory tools, ensure that handwashing facilities are provided in every place. The goal is to help every citizen develop the habit of washing their hands in everyday life instead of only being aware of it when a pandemic strikes.