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If you have ever visited a hospital in Nigeria and struggled to find clean water to wash your hands or a decent toilet to use, you are not alone. That is exactly the problem the Federal Government tried to fix in 2022.

On August 18, 2022, in Abuja, the then Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, officially launched the National Guidelines for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Healthcare Facilities. For the first time, Nigeria has one complete document that tells every hospital, clinic and health centre how clean it must be.

Before this day, there was no single national standard. There were small documents here and there about hygiene, but nothing comprehensive. According to Dr. Ehanire, that gap was dangerous. Without clean water, good toilets and proper waste disposal, a hospital itself can become a place where diseases spread instead of where people get healed.

And the numbers prove it. At the launch, officials revealed that about 26 percent of healthcare facilities in Nigeria do not have basic WASH services. That means 1 in 4 hospitals or clinics has no steady clean water, no proper toilet, or no way to safely dispose of infectious waste. Imagine a woman giving birth in such a place, or a nurse trying to treat patients without water to wash her hands.

Dr. Ehanire was very direct about it. He said without WASH, our hospitals cannot even handle COVID-19 and other infections that patients pick up inside the hospital. He described WASH as the backbone of disease prevention.

So what is actually inside the 2022 guidelines?

Think of it as a checklist every health centre must now follow.

First is water. Every facility, from a big teaching hospital to a small Primary Health Centre (PHC) in a village, must have clean, safe water available all the time, and it must be inside the facility — not a well 500 meters away.

Second is toilets. Not just any toilet, but clean, private, well-maintained toilets that a pregnant woman, an elderly person or a person with disability can use without stress. And human waste must be disposed of safely.

Third is handwashing. This is critical. The guidelines say there must be handwashing points with water and soap at every important spot — where babies are delivered, where injections are given, in the laboratory and at the entrance.

Fourth is waste. Blood-stained cotton, used gloves, needles — all of that must be separated and disposed of safely, not mixed with normal waste or dumped behind the hospital.

Fifth, and this is new, every health facility should have a small WASH team or department whose only job is to make sure hands are washed, toilets are clean and waste is managed.

The guidelines were not written by government alone. WHO, UNICEF and other partners worked on it to make sure it matches global standards. In fact, Nigeria already had a small guideline for PHCs in 2017, but this 2022 version covers all hospitals — PHC, general and teaching hospitals.

Why does this matter to you? Because under Universal Health Coverage, the government is pushing "PHC under one roof." That cannot work if the PHC has no water. The guidelines will now be tracked through the WASH NORM system that monitors water and sanitation in health facilities nationwide.

Since 2018 when Nigeria declared a state of emergency in the WASH sector, this launch is one of the biggest steps taken to stop infections at the source — inside the hospitals themselves.

For ordinary Nigerians, it means next time you visit a clinic, you can ask: Where is the handwashing point? Is the toilet clean? Is waste properly kept? Now there is a national document backing you.