Handwashing facilities — all countries

Handwashing facilities — World

Handwashing facilities in the world in 2024 — 78%. Since 2017, the indicator has risen by 9.2 pp.

2024 78% +0.5 pp vs 2023
World rank
Period maximum 78%2024
Period minimum 68.8%2017

Trend over time

2017–2024 · % of population

Handwashing facilities — World, 2017–202467.57072.57577.580201720182019202020212022202320242017: 68.8%2018: 70.2%2019: 71.3%2020: 72.5%2021: 73.9%2022: 75.1%2023: 77.5%2024: 78%
Change over the period: +9.2 pp Annual average: 1.31 pp

Comparison, 2024

How the value compares with the world and the groups this territory belongs to: World

World 78%
World 78%
Handwashing facilities — World, by year World All countries CSV XLSX
Year % Change, pp
2024 78 +0.5 pp
2023 77.5 +2.4 pp
2022 75.1 +1.1 pp
2021 73.9 +1.5 pp
2020 72.5 +1.1 pp
2019 71.3 +1.2 pp
2018 70.2 +1.3 pp
2017 68.8

About the indicator

The share of the population that has an equipped place for washing hands with water and soap in the dwelling. The indicator looks a small one next to piped water and sewerage, but in its contribution to reducing diarrheal and respiratory disease it is comparable to them, and it costs incomparably less. The COVID-19 pandemic made it visible: it turned out that in the poorest countries of Africa fewer than a quarter of the population have facilities for washing hands.

Important: Not all countries are surveyed: where practically everyone has such facilities, these data are not collected. That is why the aggregate by country group is computed only where coverage is sufficient — averaging the surveyed countries alone would give a picture noticeably worse than the reality.

Source: Global Health Observatory (WHO), license CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.