FHI 360’s programmatic interventions are designed to create clean environments and promote behaviors that support healthy households and communities. Our integrated perspective recognizes the essential relationship between people’s health and their environment. Access to safe water, adequate sanitation and proper hygiene (WASH) reduces illness and death. Babies and young children are particularly at risk of contracting WASH-related diseases.
The WASHplus project creates supportive environments for healthy households and communities by delivering high-impact interventions for improved water supply, sanitation and hygiene and decreased indoor air pollution. Serving Madagascar and Zambia, the program reduces diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections, the top two killers of children under five years of age globally. Through WASHplus, FHI 360 effectively integrates WASH and indoor air pollution activities into existing HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, nutrition and education projects. In addition, we invested in communication interventions that brought about measurable improvements in handwashing practices.
FHI 360 serves as the secretariat for the Global Handwashing Partnership (GHP), a coalition of international stakeholders whose focus is handwashing and child health. By supporting the practice of proper handwashing at critical times, the partnership empowers families, schools and communities in developing countries to prevent diarrhea and respiratory infections. Through service to the GHP, FHI 360 recognizes that water, sanitation and hygiene are pillars of health and development.
