It’s time to clean up our act on home hygiene: embedding Targeted Hygiene for health resilience

In response to the pandemic, the UK Government published a 2021 vision for a National Health Resilience Strategy. This affirms that a “whole-of-society approach” is needed to make us better able to adapt to uncertainty and adversity, including threats posed by disease outbreaks, and tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by reducing antibiotic prescribing.

This report draws on the results of a recent public poll conducted by RSPH/IFH, to highlight:

• How the public’s commitment to HEDL hygiene is strong, but confusion persists about how to implement it effectively.
• The issues associated with continuing with the hygiene status quo and the need for a fundamental rethink to ensure that HEDL hygiene is both effective and appropriate to the issues we currently face;
• How a targeted approach to hygiene based on risk management offers a framework to meet these challenges.

This report puts forward key recommendations outlining how government and institutional policy makers can further embrace targeted hygiene to improve health resilience.

Also avaiable at:  www.rsph.org.uk/TargetedHygiene