Infection prevention and control (IPC) and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are essential components for maintaining safe health service operations and mitigating risks of healthcare-associated infections during essential health service delivery.  

During public health emergencies, existing systems for safe patient management and care delivery may become overwhelmed, resulting in reduced capacity, infrastructure, and essential staffing requirements to respond. Simultaneously, reinforcing IPC and WASH capacities within health care services is critical to mitigate the risk of initiation or amplification of infectious disease outbreaks. This may be even more critical in fragile, vulnerable and conflict-afflicted settings, where IPC and WASH infrastructure may be further challenged.   

Outside of the health care environment, the availability of WASH services and hygienic infrastructure (e.g. hand hygiene practices, safe water supplies and waste management systems) and the implementation of public health and social measures help to limit outbreaks in congregate settings such as places of worship, schools, shelters and prisons.   

Thus, the WHO Health Emergencies (WHE) IPC and WASH team's mandate is to strengthen capacities of countries and their health systems for improved emergency preparedness, operational readiness and response through evidence-based IPC and WASH measures in healthcare and community settings while mitigating healthcare- associated infections.  

The WHE IPC & WASH Teams deliver their work in alignment with four main goals:

• Supporting Member States and other partners through the development of evidence-based technical products for epidemic or pandemic prone diseases, such as IPC & WASH guidelines, operational tools, and training products.
  
• Facilitating effective IPC and WASH resource planning and mobilization during the readiness and response phases of emergencies.
  
• Enhancing country PHE readiness and response for public health emergencies through capacity strengthening and collaboration with key stakeholders and networks.
  
• Strengthen research and innovation to advance science, technology, safe and quality care as related to IPC, WASH and health and care workers.