WHO WASH FIT Implementation for Health Care Facilities Training Course

Course overview

Health care facilities cannot deliver safe care when water points fail, toilets are unusable, waste routes cross patient areas, or cleaning teams lack the supplies and procedures to work safely. These gaps increase health care-associated infection risk, undermine maternal and newborn services, expose staff and patients to preventable hazards, and weaken facility readiness for outbreaks. WHO WASH FIT provides a structured improvement method, but facility teams need practical capability to assess conditions, prioritise actions, assign accountability, and sustain progress within constrained budgets and operational realities.

This course equips participants to implement the WHO Water and Sanitation for Health Facility Improvement Tool (WASH FIT) from baseline assessment through improvement planning, monitoring, and review. Participants learn to establish a multidisciplinary WASH FIT team; score and interpret facility indicators; identify risks across water, sanitation, hygiene, health care waste, environmental cleaning, energy, and management; and convert findings into costed, prioritised improvement actions. The programme also connects WASH FIT results with infection prevention and control (IPC), service-quality, emergency-preparedness, and facility management processes.

Instructor-led sessions are combined with worked facility scenarios, indicator-scoring practice, group prioritisation exercises, and implementation-planning workshops. Participants use WASH FIT assessment and action-planning templates to analyse a realistic health facility case, test feasible improvement options, and present recommendations to a simulated facility leadership team. Each participant leaves with a completed WASH FIT implementation package: a baseline assessment summary, prioritised risk register, improvement plan, monitoring dashboard, and 90-day mobilisation plan ready to adapt for their own facility or programme.

The course is designed for professionals responsible for WASH, IPC, quality improvement, facility operations, public health programming, or health-system support in hospitals, clinics, and humanitarian health facilities.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Establish a multidisciplinary WASH FIT team with defined roles, decision rights, and review arrangements
• Conduct a WHO WASH FIT baseline assessment using indicator scoring and evidence verification
• Interpret WASH FIT findings to identify service gaps across water, sanitation, hygiene, waste, cleaning, energy, and management
• Develop a facility WASH risk register that links hazards, affected users, controls, owners, and residual risks
• Prioritise improvement actions using risk severity, feasibility, cost, service criticality, and outbreak implications
• Prepare a costed WASH FIT improvement plan with responsibilities, milestones, procurement needs, and escalation points
• Design a monitoring dashboard using WASH FIT indicators, routine verification checks, and management-review triggers
• Present a 90-day WASH FIT implementation plan that aligns with IPC, quality-improvement, and facility governance processes

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Health Facility Managers — who must allocate resources and coordinate corrective action across clinical and support services
• WASH Officers and Engineers — who assess water, sanitation, waste, and environmental infrastructure in health facilities
• Infection Prevention and Control Practitioners — who need to connect WASH deficiencies with infection risks and improvement actions
• Quality Improvement Officers — who lead facility assessments, action plans, and performance-review cycles
• Humanitarian Health Programme Managers — who must establish safe WASH conditions in supported clinics and hospitals
• Ministry of Health Environmental Health Officers — who supervise facility standards and support district-level improvement planning

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working familiarity with health care facility operations, public health WASH, IPC, environmental health, engineering support, or quality-improvement work. They should understand basic concepts such as safe water supply, sanitation, hand hygiene, health care waste segregation, routine cleaning, and facility reporting lines. Experience conducting facility walkthroughs or using checklists is helpful, but prior use of WHO WASH FIT is not required. Participants should be comfortable reading simple tables and using a spreadsheet for action planning. No engineering qualification, laboratory expertise, advanced statistics, or specialised water-testing equipment is required.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led briefings to explain the WASH FIT method, followed by guided application to a realistic health care facility case. Participants work with assessment forms, evidence prompts, risk-register templates, prioritisation matrices, and action-plan formats used in WASH FIT implementation. Small groups score indicators, challenge assumptions during facility-walkthrough simulations, and negotiate actions across clinical, maintenance, and management perspectives. Daily debriefs connect decisions to IPC and operational constraints. The final day is an application-planning workshop in which each participant builds a practical 90-day implementation roadmap.

Course outline

Day 1: WASH FIT foundations and facility mobilisation

• Purpose, structure, and implementation cycle of WHO WASH FIT 2.0
• The six WASH FIT domains and their relationship to safe health care
• Establishing the multidisciplinary facility WASH FIT team
• Defining facility scope, service areas, and assessment boundaries
• Linking WASH FIT with IPC, quality improvement, and emergency preparedness
• Evidence sources for facility assessments and verification interviews
• Ethical, safety, and participation considerations during facility walkthroughs

Workshop: Participants map stakeholders for a case facility and produce a WASH FIT team charter with roles, evidence sources, and a review schedule.

Day 2: Baseline assessment and indicator scoring

• Using WASH FIT indicator definitions and scoring guidance
• Assessing water supply quantity, quality, continuity, and accessibility
• Assessing sanitation access, functionality, privacy, and inclusivity
• Assessing hand hygiene facilities at points of care and toilets
• Assessing health care waste segregation, storage, transport, and treatment
• Assessing environmental cleaning systems, supplies, and accountability
• Documenting evidence, scoring gaps, and resolving assessor disagreement

Workshop: Teams complete a scored baseline assessment for a simulated outpatient and maternity facility and produce an evidence-backed gap summary.

Day 3: Risk analysis and improvement prioritisation

• Converting WASH FIT gaps into facility-specific risk statements
• Building a WASH risk register with hazard, exposure, control, and owner fields
• Applying risk severity and likelihood ratings to patient and staff safety
• Identifying high-risk service areas including maternity, theatres, and isolation zones
• Using feasibility, cost, urgency, and service criticality to rank actions
• Distinguishing immediate operational fixes from infrastructure investments
• Integrating outbreak readiness and climate-resilience considerations into priorities

Workshop: Participants build a risk register and prioritisation matrix for the case facility, producing a ranked list of immediate, medium-term, and capital actions.

Day 4: Action planning, resourcing, and governance

• Writing SMART WASH FIT improvement actions and acceptance criteria
• Estimating resource requirements, operating costs, and maintenance implications
• Assigning accountable owners across clinical, cleaning, maintenance, and management teams
• Sequencing actions through 30-, 90-, and 180-day implementation horizons
• Embedding WASH actions in facility workplans, budgets, and procurement requests
• Escalating infrastructure and supply-chain constraints through management channels
• Communicating WASH FIT findings to leadership, partners, and frontline staff

Workshop: Teams prepare a costed improvement plan for the highest-priority risks and present an approval brief to a simulated facility management committee.

Day 5: Monitoring, review, and workplace implementation

• Selecting WASH FIT monitoring indicators and verification frequencies
• Designing a simple dashboard for action status, service functionality, and risk trends
• Conducting supportive supervision and repeat-assessment reviews
• Using corrective-action logs and escalation triggers for unresolved gaps
• Aligning WASH FIT monitoring with IPCAF and facility quality-review meetings
• Tracking sustainability through maintenance plans, supply availability, and staff behaviours
• Developing a 90-day WASH FIT mobilisation and communication plan

Workshop: Each participant completes and peer-reviews a 90-day implementation roadmap, monitoring dashboard, and leadership briefing for their own facility context.

Tools & standards covered

WHO WASH FIT 2.0, WHO Infection Prevention and Control Assessment Framework (IPCAF), WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme service ladders, WHO Water Safety Plan Manual

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions