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Improved partnerships aligned at the scientific, strategic, and operational levels, are especially necessary to optimize and accelerate positive health outcomes through WASH. Fully functioning WASH services in health care facilities are essential to the delivery of safe quality care but have until recently been neglected due institutional fragmentation. COVID-19 efforts have been increasingly leveraged to strengthen policies, regulations, and investments in WASH.

Global data show that on average progress needs to be four times faster to meet its promise on safely managed WASH for all by 2030.

Despite interdependencies between the WASH and health sectors, gaps in coordination and governance occur because they are led by different ministries, local authorities, international organizations, NGOs and private sector actors at all levels.

Shockingly, major gaps in basic WASH still exist, with 1.8 billion people using health care facilities that lack basic water services and 800 million using facilities with no toilets.

Progress requires cooperation across a wide range of stakeholders, such as policy-makers, engineers and scientists, health care professionals, veterinarians, farmers, donors, NGOs, and private citizens and corporations.

The global polio eradication programme is a well-established example of a health partnership with wastewater laboratories, using wastewater as part of a wider surveillance and control approach. Treatment of wastewater from communities, health facilities, plant and animal production and antimicrobial manufacturing also limit the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. Partnerships across policy domains that address the life cycle of harmful products are essential to reduce water pollution in order to safeguard human health and aquatic ecosystems.

Climate change is leading to shifting WASH-related health risks – particularly for mosquito-borne diseases where larvae breed in water containers and uncontained wastewater. Collaboration between and within institutions needs to be strengthened to integrate disaster and climate risk management into national policies and practices. Experiences with recent and ongoing public health emergencies, including COVID-19, Ebola, Zika and cholera outbreaks, highlight the centrality of WASH in preparedness, readiness, response and recovery efforts.

Weak partnerships between the health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sectors lead to significant losses in efficiencies, despite their obvious interdependencies. Improved partnerships aligned at the scientific, strategic, and operational levels, are especially necessary to optimize and accelerate positive health outcomes through WASH.