Health Professionals’ Hand Hygiene Best Practice on Infection and Resistance Reduction at District Health Facilities, Cameroon

Abstract

Hospital-based hand hygiene measures and best practice have been empirically proven to prevent cross-transmission of infection and resistance spreading. Little is documented on hand hygiene best practices in reducing pathogenic micro-organisms transmission dynamic, infection and resistance spread at district/community health facilities and hospitals in Cameroon. Our study thus, aimed at evaluating health workers hand hygiene measures compliance and best practices against pathogenic infections over a period of seven months at Nylon Health District, Douala, Cameroon. A cross-sectional study using an observation grid analysis based on WHO protocol was used to collect samples from 155 consented health workers from eight Nylon health facilities. A univariate logistic regression was performed to define the compliance rates and assessment of indicators at 95% confidence interval (CI). An overall hand hygiene compliance rate of 7.74% (12/155) was observed. Public and private health facilities had similar hand hygiene compliance rates of 7.69% and 7.84% respectively. Doctors had the most nails within 0.5 cm/ and the nails of the midwives were the most varnished and/or artificial nails. Professional qualifications (state certified nurse/midwives (OR=10.74; 95% CI OR [1.22; 94.43]; p-value=0.03) and doctors (OR=8.38; CI 95% OR [1.67; 41.95]; p-value=0.01)) and the wearing of jewellery and/or artificial nails or varnish, and/or nails of size>5 mm during treatment (OR=0.16; 95% CI OR [0.03; 0.97]; p-value=0.04) were the factors significantly influencing the compliance of hand washing. This study shows that hand hygiene measures best practice amongst health staff at district health facilities was low which calls for urgent awareness and health education to reinforce the hospital’s infection prevention and control standards training activities so as to improve quality care delivery and reduce antimicrobial resistance spread in Cameroon.