Abstract:

Background: Infection prevention and control refers to all policies, procedures and activity which aim to prevent or minimize the risk of transmission of infectious diseases at healthcare facilities. An effective hospital infection prevention and control program improves patient safety and the quality of patient care and reduces adverse socioeconomic and psychological impact of infectious diseases to patients and health system.

Objective: The broad objective of this study is to assess the knowledge and practice regarding standardized infection prevention and control among healthcare workers at Bugando Medical Centre Mwanza.

Methods: A cross sectional study was done among 306 health care workers at Bugando Medical Centre. Simple random sampling technique was used to select study participants while data collection was done with the aid of questionnaire. Following ethical consideration, a total of 306 questionnaires were administered face to face respectively in BMC.

Results: All 306 participants responded to the questionnaires, Whereas 137 (44.8%) were female and 169 (55.2%) were male. Among them 8 (2.6%) were medical attendants, 52 (17.0%) were Nurses, 5 (1.6%) were clinical assistants, 209 (68.3%) were medical doctors, 12 (3.9%) were specialists and 20 (6.5%) were others including lab scientist and pharmacist. Their knowledge was high, 96.1% knew the correct definition of safe injection, 99.9% knew the risks associated with unsafe injection, 98.4% knew the diseases that can be transmitted through unsafe injection, 90.8% knew the three common routes of giving injections and 85.3% knew the common complications after giving injection.100% discard syringes after giving injection, 65.4% do not recap needles, 95.4% perform skin preparation with alcohol and 90.5% wash hands before and after giving injection. 90.8% discard infectious sharp and needles in the sharp box, 78.4% dispose infectious biodegradable waste in the red waste bins, 54.9% dispose infectious non-biodegradable waste in the yellow waste bins, 29.4% knew the correct way of disposing expired drugs and 65.5% reported to have not been affected due to poor health care waste management.

Conclusion: The study showed that individuals with more years of experience in health practices have good knowledge and practice of infection prevention control compared to those with less years of experience. Most of the intern doctors, pharmacists and lab scientists have poor knowledge and practice; this shows that the current academic programs did not adequately cover topics on infection prevention and control in health care facilities.