Knowledge of Transmission and Prevention of Nosocomial Infections: Primary Health Care workers perspective in Plateau State North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Nosocomial infections are a worldwide phenomenon, globally, it occurs among 712% of the hospitalized patients with over 1.4 million people suffering from infections acquired in treatment centres and a resultant estimated annual death of 80,000.In view of this, this study aimed to assess the knowledge of transmission and prevention of nosocomial infections and factors influencing it among Primary Health Care workers in Plateau State. Methodology: This was a cross sectional study conducted among 50 primary health care workers using quantitative method of data collection. Epi info statistical software version 3.5.4 was used for data analysis with a 95% confidence interval used in this study and a p-value of ? 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Result: The predominant age group of the respondents was 21-30 years with a mean age of 34.5 9.9 years. Thirty (60.0%) of the respondents could correctly explain the concept of nosocomial infections with a little above half (56.0%) of the respondents having good knowledge of transmission and prevention of nosocomial infections. Attendance of prior trainings on infection prevention and control showed statistically significant influence on knowledge of prevention and transmission of nosocomial infections. Conclusion: This study revealed a fairly high level of knowledge of the transmission and prevention of nosocomial infections amongst Primary health Care workers. However, training and retraining of health care workers on infection prevention and control is required in order to achieve an infection free health workplace.