Infection prevention and control

Located within the Integrated Health Services (IHS) department, the IPC Unit provides technical leadership and coordination of the infection prevention and control work at WHO headquarters.

About us

Key areas of work

Core components

Hand hygiene

Two health workers examine the packaging of a sterile syringe to be sure it is safe for use.

Injection safety

Surgical site infections

WHO urges action against antimicrobial resistance in the Western Pacific Region

IPC and antimicrobial resistance

Lab technician rubbing solution on a petri dish

Sepsis

Basic IPC and primary care

Training resources on IPC

Highlights

Global IPC progress tracker

Tracking the work of WHO, Member States and partners towards meeting the vision of set out in the 2023 Global strategy on IPC that, by 2030, everyone accessing or providing health care is safe from associated infections and of executing the actions, and meeting the targets set in out in the Global action plan and monitoring framework on IPC, 2024-2030.

WHO GAPMF practical guide

A WHO practical guide to provide a practical, stepwise approach to the development and implementation of national action plans (NAPs) for IPC, aligned with the WHO GAPMF. The guide includes inspirational country stories and directs the users towards tools and resources to help countries to prioritize, cost, implement, monitor and evaluate their national action plan activities.

Launch event - 23 June 2025

Learn more about the event

Watch the recorded session

Key global policy, strategy and planning resources for IPC

This action plan was approved at the 77th WHA in 2024. It provides clear actions, indicators, and targets to support Member States in improving national- and facility-level IPC actions

Read the global strategy on IPC (Approved by the WHA 76)

Read the WHA 75 IPC Resolution

Read the global report on IPC

The case for investment and action in infection prevention and control

Visit the IPC global portal

News and events

IPC newsletter

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Subscribe to newsletter

Country stories

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To help inspire your IPC implementation journey, WHO is and has been collecting country stories from around the world to showcase exemplars of IPC implementation as they relate to the WHO core components.

Latest country story:

Upcoming events

Webinar recordings

WHO IPC webinar recordings

United Nations Global Assembly (UNGA) - Leadership of Oman on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Watch the recorded session (September 24th, 2024)

Recurrent events

Access the 2026 campaign website

Access WHHD 26 →

September 13th is World Sepsis Day

Visit the website

Resources

Latest publications

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WHO training package on environmental cleaning: evaluation methodology guide

This guide provides a framework for evaluating the WHO training package, Environmental cleaning and infection prevention and control in health-care facilities...

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The purpose of this document is to define who is the infection prevention and control (IPC) professional and identify what core competencies are needed...

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The first ever Global guidelines for the prevention of surgical site infection (SSI) were published on 3 November 2016, then updated in some parts and...

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