Knowledge, attitudes and practices towards viral haemorrhagic fevers amongst healthcare workers in urban and rural public healthcare facilities in the N’zérékoré prefecture, Guinea: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: The 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa began in Guinea's Forest region, a region now considered to be at high risk for future epidemics of viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHF). Good knowledge, attitudes and practices towards VHF amongst healthcare workers in such regions are a central pillar of infection prevention and control (IPC). To inform future training in IPC, this study assesses the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) towards VHF amongst healthcare workers in public healthcare facilities in the most populated prefecture in Forest Guinea, and compares results from urban and rural areas. Methods: In June and July 2019, we interviewed 102 healthcare workers in the main urban and rural public healthcare facilities in the N'zérékoré prefecture in Forest Guinea. We used an interviewer-administered questionnaire adapted from validated KAP surveys. Results: The great majority of respondents demonstrated good knowledge and favourable attitudes towards VHF. However, respondents reported some gaps in preventive practices such as VHF suspect case detection. They also reported a shortage of protective medical equipment used in everyday clinical work in both urban and rural healthcare facilities and a lack of training in IPC, especially in rural healthcare facilities. However, whether or not healthcare workers had been trained in IPC did not seem to influence their level of KAP towards VHF. Conclusions: Three years after the end of the Ebola epidemic, our findings suggest that public healthcare facilities in the N'zérékoré prefecture in Forest Guinea still lack essential protective equipment and some practical training in VHF suspect case detection. To minimize the risk of future VHF epidemics and improve management of outbreaks of infectious diseases in the region, current efforts to strengthen the public healthcare system in Guinea should encompass questions of supply and IPC training.

Coronavirus Disease-2019: Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Health Care Workers at Makerere University Teaching Hospitals, Uganda

“…Our study shows that HCWs in Makerere University Teaching Hospitals have good COVID-19 prevention practices similar to findings by Alfahan et al on coronaviruses (29), Raab et al on Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea (30) and in the general population of the Chinese on COVID-19 (19). Majority of the HCWs are following infection prevention and control practices recommended by the Ministry of Health Uganda and WHO.…”

Prevalence and impact of burnout, secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction on hand hygiene of healthcare workers in medical aid team during COVID-19 pandemic

“…The inappropriate adherence of hand hygiene may induce terrible cross-infection between HCWs and patients, causing unnecessary morbidity, mortality and healthcare cost [3]. Current studies have explored the impact of knowledge, attitude, awareness and sociodemographic characteristic on hand hygiene comprehensively, while the impact of psychological status is little known [4][5][6][7]. Although Colindres and Manomenidis found that burnout was the predictor of lower hand hygiene, the small sample size limited the generalization of the two studies [7,8].…”

Availability of workplace policy for prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 and its relationship with personal protection behaviours: A survey of employees

“…Improvements are needed for employers as well as managers and administrators to enhance the availability of guidelines; moreover, there should be instructions or templates to develop guidelines and measures provided by health authorities as a reference for employers to follow and develop their own version. Adequate training for infection control can be made available to employees to improve their awareness and hygiene practice based on experiences from outbreaks and epidemics of other diseases [16,21]. Among the different occupations, more efforts are required to provide workplace prevention guidelines and measures for manual labourers, including service workers/sales/craft workers, plant/machine operators, and assemblers and elementary workers, as their reported availability of such guidelines was lower, and some of them, such as service/sales workers, are exposed to a higher risk than others because of having more frequent contact with other individuals.…”

“…The questionnaire was developed based on a related study [16] and WHO guidelines for COVID-19 prevention in workplace [8]. This study focused on two major aspects as follows: 1) availability of workplace guidelines and measures for preventing COVID-19; 2) frequency in past 7 days of personal protection behaviours; eight behaviours under four categories were assessed: hand hygiene (handwashing before meals, handwashing after using the toilet, use of alcohol-based hand rub when outside), face mask (wearing face mask when outside), household hygiene (putting disinfectant into toilets, putting disinfectant into drain-pipe), social distancing (avoiding leaving home, avoiding contact with neighbours).…”