IFH is a global, professional, not-for-profit organisation which was established in 1997 in response to concerns about the lack of expert international or national bodies which could speak from a scientific or medical standpoint about home & community hygiene.

The primary objectives of IFH are:

  • To raise awareness of the importance of the home in the chain of infectious disease transmission, and promote hygiene as the means to better control such disease in developed and developing countries.
  • To ensure home hygiene is based on sound scientific principles i.e. to establish home hygiene as a scientific area in its own right.
  • To promote and review research into areas of home hygiene which are currently not well understood and facilitate debate and consensus on issues relating to home hygiene.

The primary target audiences for IFH are:

  • Opinion formers, policy makers, NGOs, IGOs, public health scientists, community health practitioners and “public society” – particularly those who are involved with ID.

One of the key features of IFH is that it looks at hygiene “holistically” from the point of view of the family, and the range of actions which they need to undertake (food and water hygiene, handwashing, care of vulnerable groups, safe dispersal of human and other waste in order to protect themselves from infectious disease. IFH believes that this approach is key to achieving behaviour change .

The activities of the IFH are developed in consultation with hygiene experts representing all areas of the world. Click here to download our information brochure, which addresses the reasons why hygiene in the home and community is important in reducing the burden of infectious disease both in developed and developing areas of the world. It describes the IFH and the work it is doing to raise awareness of the importance of hygiene and give support to community hygiene promotion programmes.






The IFH mission can be summarised in the following points:

  • To raise awareness of the importance of the home in the chain of infectious disease transmission, and promote hygiene as the means to better control such disease in developed and developing countries .
  • To ensure home hygiene practice is based on sound scientific principles .
  • To encourage professional and public education on responsible hygiene practices in the home to reduce the risk of infection .
  • To promote and review research into areas of home hygiene which are currently not well understood and facilitate debate and consensus on issues relating to home hygiene.
  • To evaluate issues related to hygiene which may impact on community health and the home .
  • To develop and encourage participation and partnerships with other academic, governmental and health organisations with similarly declared intentions of improving the health and well-being of people who may be at risk of infections arising in the home .


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In March 1997 a group of international hygiene experts met at the Royal Society of Medicine in London , UK. A number of hygiene issues related to health in the home were identified and reviewed, including changing trends in domestically-acquired foodborne infections, the increasing significance of new pathogens and antibiotic resistant bacteria in the community, the increasing numbers of people more susceptible to infectious disease and the consequences of changing trends in healthcare which result in more people being cared for or nursed in the home environment.

The meeting resulted in a consensus view that there is a pressing need to raise awareness of the role of domestic hygiene in the prevention of infections acquired in the home. It was also acknowledged that there is a need to better understand hygiene in the home and to develop hygiene policy for the home setting. The experts then met on a number of occasions to further explore these issues, agree objectives and publish information on hygiene and its importance in the home. In 1998, the group agreed to form a non-profit non-governmental organisation, The International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene (IFH), with a mission of promoting their aims and objectives.

 


Recent events suggest that re-evaluation of current practice and promotion of improved hygiene in the domestic setting could have a significant impact in reducing the global burden of infectious disease. The IFH believes that better understanding of home hygiene might also be the key to improved hygiene in hospitals and other settings. IFH believes that a greater emphasis on ‘prevention through hygiene' is needed because:

  • Infectious disease remains a significant global concern. In the developing world infectious diseases account for up to 40% of deaths .
  • Demographic and social changes together with changing trends in healthcare mean that more people, particularly the elderly and very young, are being cared for in a home healthcare environment by a home carer who thus has a need for good knowledge of hygiene. Whereas there has been an attitude that, compared with the hospital environment, the home is mainly populated by «normal healthy adults», changing trends in population age and healthcare contribute to a rise in the numbers of people in the home who must be regarded as «at risk» .
  • Gastrointestinal infections (including food and waterborne infections) remain at unacceptable levels, both in developed as well as developing countries. The majority of these infections could be prevented through good hygiene.
  • Many of the respiratory and foodborne infections arising in the home are now known to be viral in origin. Since these infections are not treatable by antibiotics, this reinforces the need for prevention through hygiene .
  • The implementation of improved hygiene standards prevents the spread of resistant strains, and is a means of reducing antibiotic prescribing and thus the impact of antibiotic resistance.
  • Certain pathogens (e.g. Hepatitis B virus, Helicobacter pylori ) are now being implicated as a cause of, or as co-factors, in cancer and chronic degenerative diseases.
  • Globalisation of food supplies, travel and refugee problems serve to move pathogens around an increasingly small world to areas where there is little or no innate resistance .

 

In the developing world one of the main “drivers” for change is the UN Millennium Development Goals which have firmly established the issues of “water, sanitation and also hygiene” on the global agenda. For decades, universal access to water and sanitation has been seen as the essential step in reducing this preventable disease burden, but it is now clear that substantial reductions in diarrhoeal diseases are best achieved by programmes that integrate hygiene promotion with improvement in water quality and availability, and sanitation.

From the various recent crises involving infectious agents there is growing realisation that, if infectious disease is to be contained in a manner which is economically sustainable, control of infectious disease must be a shared responsibility between government and the public – and that means finding ways to improve standards of hygiene practice in the domestic setting. If this is to be achieved there is a need for greater emphasis on more appropriate hygiene education in schools and on providing the public with clear well presented information on the nature of the threat posed by infectious agents and advice on how to timely target hygiene measures in appropriate situations.

In line with this, IFH is committed to promoting hygiene education and developing community-based projects that will empower communities and individuals to take responsibility for their health in terms of hygiene in the home and its environment.

The main output from IFH is as follows:

  • IFH has made detailed reviews of the available data, which have been used to advocate for increased emphasis on hygiene and to develop (and defend) a risk-based or “targeted” approach to home hygiene.
  • In recognition of the need to support hygiene promotion in the community, IFH has been working to produce “Home Hygiene Guidelines and “Home Hygiene Training Resources”. The purpose of these materials is to scope and explain the principles and practice of home hygiene. The key feature of the training resources is that they are written in simple practical language which can be understood by those who are responsible for actioning community programmes, many of whom may have little background knowledge in hygiene.
  • IFH has produced a series of short briefing documents on key aspects of hygiene for use by hygiene professionals, public society, the media etc .
  • IFH has produced review documents and consensus statements on “Hygiene issues” including concerns about a possible link between biocide overuse and antibiotic resistance, and between cleanliness and allergic diseases (the Hygiene Hypothesis). By engaging the support of appropriate scientists, opinion formers and health professionals, IFH has worked to build a positive climate of opinion in which concerns about these issues are balanced against the need for hygiene.

Through the IFH website (all above documents are available from our website), conferences, publications, exhibition stands, workshops, and extended networking, IFH has promoted its approach to hygiene practice, and developed a reputation as a global player.

One of the key actions which IFH has undertaken has been the development of a risk-based (or HACCP-based) approach to home hygiene. This approach has been used successfully for controlling microbial quality in food and other manufacturing environments, and is now being introduced as a means to control hospital-acquired infections. The risk-based or targeted approach has been used by IFH as the basis for making evidence-based decisions about home hygiene and hygiene procedures.

The concept of “targeted hygiene” also provides a way to address the various “hygiene issues”  such as those related to the «hygiene hypothesis» and the concerns about antimicrobial resistance, in that it offers the means to optimise protection against infection risks in the home, whilst disturbing the balance of our human immune system and our natural environment to the least extent.







Professor Sally F Bloomfield
Consultant in Hygiene and Infectious Disease Prevention, Chairman and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IFH Honorary Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Professor Dr Martin Exner
Direktor, Hygiene-Institut, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany

Professor Gaetano M Fara
Direttore dell’Istituto di Igiene "G. Sanarelli", Università "La Sapienza" di Roma, Rome, Italy

Professor Kumar Jyoti Nath
President, Institution of Public Health Engineers, India. Former Director, All India Institute of Hygiene Public Health, Calcutta, India

Dr Elizabeth Scott
Consultant in Food and Environmental Hygiene, Newton, Massachusetts, USA

Carolien van der Voorden
Programme Officer, Networking and Knowledge Management, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council

Past members

Dr Rijkelt Beumer (1997-2006)
Laboratory of Food Microbiology, Department of Food Technology and Nutrition, Wageningen University Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Trustees

  • Mr John Michael Ballington
  • Prof Sandy Cairncross, Professor of Environmental Health, Director, Well Centre, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  • John Pickup, Consultant in Human and Environmental Toxicity, Hygiene Hypothesis , UK
  • Professor Sally F Bloomfield, Chairman of IFH and Honorary Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London , UK






The IFH relies on a group of external experts selected on the basis of expertise in fields of interest for the IFH, such as microbial resistance, hygiene and immunity, infection disease transmission, hygiene issues related to geographical conditions. These consultants are recognised international experts in the chosen fields, and are called upon to provide expert opinions or to review the work and publications of the IFH. The IFH believes this external peer-review system contributes to the independency of the IFH as a scientific body.

Hygiene and Public Health

  • Prof Nagymajtenyi, Head, Department of Public Health, Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical University, Szeged, Hungary
  • Prof Syed Sattar, Director, Center for Research and Environmental Microbiology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

Hygiene and public health in developing countries

Anti-microbial Resistance

  • Dr Peter Gilbert, Reader in Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Manchester

Hygiene and Immunity

  • Prof Steven Holgate, MRC Clinical Professor of Immunopharmacology, RCMB Division, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton UK
  • John Pickup, Consultant in Human and Environmental Toxicity, Hygiene Hypothesis, UK
  • Dr Ros Stanwell Smith, Consultant in Public Health, London, UK





Facilitating the transfer and exchange of knowledge and stimulating scientific debate on hygiene in the domestic environment is an important objective of the IFH. To accomplish this, IFH has established a 'Home Hygiene Community', made up of scientists, health professionals, government officers and industry representatives who share an interest in the science of home hygiene. The database currently comprises some 2300 people from more than 90 countries.

IFH produces regular newsheets, “Home Hygiene and Health News”, which are posted on our website. The newsheet summarises news from IFH together with results of recent research and other activities in the field of home and community hygiene, summaries of new publications, and information on upcoming conference.

Registration on our database will entitle the hygiene community to:

  • Receive email alerts summarising the contents of our twice yearly newsheet
  • Submit articles for inclusion on our newsheet
  • Submit materials for inclusion on our website (our website currently receives 7-10,000 visitors per month)
  • Participate in a two-way communication with the IFH and the other database contacts. Note: the IFH database is confidential and no personal information is released outside the IFH Secretariat without their permission.

Community Membership carries no specific duties, only entitlements. We merely invite you to send us your comments, contributions, and news on the subject of Home Hygiene.

If you wish to register on the IFH database and receive our newsheet, please fill in the contact us form. Please be sure to give us an e-mail address, otherwise you will not be able to receive our electronic alerts.





The core activities of the IFH are supported through an educational grant provided by Unilever, Reckitt Benkiser and Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. IFH is also supported by restricted grants which are used to support specific projects.