Improving nutrition outcomes with better water, sanitation and hygiene: practical solutions for policies and programmes.

This publication, jointly prepared by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), summarizes the current evidence on the benefits of WASH for improving nutrition outcomes and describes how WASH interventions can be integrated into nutrition programmes. It provides practical suggestions, targeted at nutrition programme managers and implementers, on both "what" WASH interventions should be included in nutrition programmes and "how" to include them. It also seeks to help the WASH community to better understand their role, both as providers of technical expertise in WASH interventions and in prioritizing longer-term improvements to WASH infrastructure in areas where undernutrition is a concern.

Sustainable development cannot be realized without nutritional well-being and reaching the 2025 Global Nutrition Targets. Achieving important global health goals, such as ending preventable child and maternal deaths and the global NCD targets, will likewise require addressing malnutrition in all its forms. Integrating WASH interventions into nutrition actions can make a difference. In the dawn of a new era of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, which highlight multisectoral engagement, the time is ripe to demonstrate, practically, how nutrition and WASH actions can be integrated, for better health and the betterment of humanity.