Back to Search
Start Over
Infection prevention and control in health facilities in post-Ebola Liberia: don't forget the private sector!
- Source :
- Public health action. 7(Suppl 1)
- Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- Setting: Recognising the importance of infection prevention and control (IPC), a minimum standards tool (MST) was developed in Liberia to guide the safe (re-) opening and provision of care in health facilities. Objectives: To analyse the implementation of specific IPC measures after the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak between June 2015 and May 2016, and to compare the relative improvements in IPC between the public and private sectors. Design: A retrospective comparative cohort study. Results: We evaluated 723 (94%) of the 769 health facilities in Liberia. Of these, 437 (60%) were public and 286 (40%) were private. There was an overall improvement in the MST scores from a median of 13 to 14 out of a maximum possible score of 16. While improvements were observed in all aspects of IPC in both public and private health facilities, IPC implementation was systematically higher in public facilities. Conclusions: We demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring IPC implementation using the MST checklist in post-Ebola Liberia. Our study shows that improvements were made in key aspects of IPC after 1 year of evaluations and tailored recommendations. We also highlight the need to increase the focus on the private sector to achieve further improvements in IPC.
- Subjects :
- business.industry
Health Policy
030231 tropical medicine
Control (management)
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Original Articles
Private sector
medicine.disease
Checklist
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Environmental health
parasitic diseases
Medicine
Infection control
cardiovascular diseases
030212 general & internal medicine
Medical emergency
business
human activities
Cohort study
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 22208372
- Volume :
- 7
- Issue :
- Suppl 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Public health action
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....206ebe24b09defc3155b46e17fa67a87