**Happy Global Handwashing Day**

The practice of handwashing with soap tops the international hygiene agenda this year with the first-ever Global Handwashing Day, slated for Wednesday 15 October 2008. With 2008 as the UN International Year of Sanitation, the Global Handwashing Day will echo and reinforce its call for improved hygiene practices.

The agencies leading the Global Handwashing Day efforts are part of the Global PPPHW and include (but are not limited to) the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP/World Bank), UNICEF, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USAID through the Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP), Procter and Gamble and Unilever.

The guiding vision of Global Handwashing Day is a local and global culture of handwashing with soap. Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash their hands with soap at the critical occasions.