Publications

Introduction: Globally, it is known for the last four decades, that the majority of Health Care- Associated Infections(HCAIs) can be prevented by adequate, though not necessarily sophisticated, surveillance and control measures. Anumber of international initiatives are being undertaken to support developing countries to build and implementinfection control effectively in their health care settings. A descriptive and cross sectional, was carried out to assessthe knowledge and practices on infection prevention and control measures at Jinja regional referral hospital.Theobjectives of the study were to establish the knowledge of health workers on infection control and to establish thepractices of health workers towards infection prevention and control. Convenience sampling technique was used toselect 34 health workers at the hospital during the period of data collection. Majority of respondents 20(58.8%) hadbeen in service for more than 3 years, while only 3(8.8%) had been in service for less than a year. Findings onknowledge about infection control revealed that the majority of health workers knew that the yellow colour code ismeant to collect sharp wastes, 18(52.9%) of them knew the red colour code is meant to collect highly infectiouswastes, while black was mentioned by 11(32.5%) to collect noninfectious wastes. Regarding practices on infectioncontrol, 88% participants mentioned hand washing as a method of infection control and the least mentioned wastesegregation in specific bin liners. The majority of the participants (79.41%) have knowledge on wastes segregations.The researcher concluded that all the health workers had a substantial level of knowledge on infection preventionand control. However, this knowledge was mainly theoretical since the health workers could correctly mentioninfection prevention and control measures but most of them were not being practiced. The researcher recommendedthat through the guidance of the hospital management, an infection control and prevention committee should beestablished which should set performance objectives and hold regular period reports to evaluate the performance ofthe health center on infection prevention