Welcome to Home Hygiene and Health
This is the website of the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene (IFH). The IFH is a global, professional, not-for-profit, non-government organisation which was established in 1997 with the mission to promote health and wellbeing through improved hygiene in the home and community. The primary objectives of IFH are to:
- Raise awareness of the role of home and community hygiene in preventing infectious disease
- Promote understanding of hygiene practice in the home
- Ensure that home hygiene practice is based on the available scientific evidence
This online resource is designed to meet the needs of public health scientists, opinion formers, policy makers, NGOs, IGOs, community health practitioners, health professionals, “Public society”, and the media. IFH does not communicate directly with the public – our aim is to support those who do.
IFH addresses hygiene “holistically” from the point of view of the family, and the range of actions which they need to undertake in order to protect themselves from infectious disease including food and water hygiene, handwashing, safe disposal of human and other waste. It also includes home healthcare (caring for family members who are infected, or at greater risk of infection). IFH has developed a risk-based approach to home hygiene which has been used for developing hygiene practice guidance.
This online resource provides a range of different types of materials including:
- Scientific reviews
- Guidelines and training materials
- Plain language fact sheets and hygiene advice sheets
- Resources on home hygiene developed by other sources.
You can access these materials using the top menu bars, either by resource type (scientific materials, guidelines/training, fact sheet/advice) or by topic (hygiene concepts, procedures. organisms, diseases). You can also use our “search” functions to do “keyword search” (using the keywords provided) or “full text search” (using your own keywords).