Health care waste management (HCWM) and infection prevention and control (IPC) represent serious concerns for HIV programs. Improperly handled infectious health care waste poses risks to health workers, their clients, the community, and the environment. Improper injection practices can lead to new H...IV and other infections for health workers and clients. Beginning in 2015, AIDSFree continued the work started by the Government of Nigeria and USAID in 2004 to strengthen activities in IPC and HCWM. This report describes AIDSFree's results over 15 months of implementation of HCWM and IPC activities in seven Nigerian states prioritized by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
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This document highlights the key aspects of safe health-care waste management in order to guide policy-makers, practitioners and facility managers to improve such services in health-care facilities. It is based on the comprehensive WHO handbook Safe management of wastes from health-care activities (...WHO, 2014), and also takes into consideration relevant World Health Assembly resolutions, other UN documents and emerging global and national developments on water, sanitation and hygiene and infection prevention and control.
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The National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS and STIs 2017-2024 spells out the objectives and targets that we have jointly committed to achieve. The plan describes the strategies and activities that will need to be implemented on the ground across India's 36 States and Union Territories with the help of... AIDS Control Societies, District AIDS Prevention and Control Units, Regional Institutes, communities, development partners and the private sector. We must urgently scale up our efforts to avert new HIV infections and provide care and treatment to people living with HIV to materialise our commitment of ending AIDS in India by 2030.
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The Government of Liberia (GoL) reports three additional EVD cases linked to the Margibi County cluster, including one in Liberia’s Montserrado County; new confirmed case total reaches six
Recently extended Operation Northern Push strengthens contact tracing and EVD prevention activities ...in Sierra Leone
The Government of Guinea (GoG) and EVD response actors investigate source of infection for EVD-positive nurse in Forécariah Prefecture, the area’s first confirmed case among health care workers since March
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Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control 2014,3 :31
The spread of antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms poses anincreasing threat to affordable modern health care. In the Netherlands, efforts to control the dispersal of known and novel antimicrobial-resistant organisms have been mostly implemented at the hospital level. However, recent studies have ...recommended shifting the focus of control strategies fromsingle hospitals toward larger healthcare networks. These networks consist of clusters of hospitals that are connected viashared patients. Several studies have shown that patients transferred from one hospital to another can spread antimicrobial-resistant pathogens across the healthcare network
infection control & hospital epidemiology july 2016, vol. 37, no. 7
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March 2020
The number of African Union Member States reporting COVID-
19 cases is increasing and there is a likelihood of community transmission. The WHO recently modified the COVID-19 suspect case definition to include severe acute respiratory infection and advises testing of all severe acute r...espiratory illness (SARI) cases.1 However, many Member States have not yet started implementing these changes, they are still focussing surveillance efforts on individuals with travel history to an area with local COVID-19 transmission. This means patients with similar symptoms, but no apparent contact, may not
be investigated.
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Emerg Infect Dis. 2020 Jul [date cited]. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2607.200915
Infection control instructions call for use of alcohol-based hand rub solutions to inactivate severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. We determined the virucidal activity of World Health Organization–recommen...ded hand rub formulations, at full strength and multiple dilutions, and of the active ingredients. All disinfectants demonstrated efficient virus inactivation.
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Lessons from three African Countries.
Achieving Health for All, and in particular universal health coverage (UHC), will not happen without fully functioning basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in all health care facilities. Such services are needed to provide quality care, ensure ad...herence to infection prevention and control (IPC) norms and standards and guarantee that facilities are able to provide environments that respect the dignity and human rights of all care seekers, especially mothers, newborns and children. WHO undertook a series of national situational analyses in three countries (Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda) to understand current barriers to change, accountability structures and measures to strengthen WASH in health care facilities and more broadly, the quality of health service delivery.
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This document provides an overview of specific health care waste technologies for the treatment of solid infectious and sharp waste. For each technology, details of its operation, effects on the environment and health, requirements for installation, capacities for treating waste, examples of consuma...bles and advantages and disadvantages are described. The document is designed for health care facility administrators and planners, WASH and infection prevention control staff, national planners, donors and partners.
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This checklist is the first step in identifying and prioritizing areas of action for improving the protection of health and safety of health workers in line with WHO–ILO Global Framework for National Occupational Health Programmes for Health Workers.
It is designed to be filled out in discussio...n with management, responsible officers for occupational health, environmental health, infection prevention and control, human resources and representatives of workers in the health facility. This participatory approach will provide a variety of perspectives and a more comprehensive basis for identifying the existing preventive measures, possible problems and solutions for continuous improvement.
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Based on scientific evidence, expert consensus and country experiences, the WHO core components for infection prevention and control (IPC) are the foundation for establishing or strengthening effective programmes at the national and facility level.
These new guidelines on core components of infecti...on prevention and control (IPC) at the national and acute health care facility level will enhance the capacity of Member States to develop and implement effective technical and behaviour modifying interventions. They form a key part of WHO strategies to prevent current and future threats from infectious diseases such as Ebola, strengthen health service resilience, help combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and improve the overall quality of health care delivery. They are also intended to support countries in the development of their own national protocols for IPC and AMR action plans and to support health care facilities as they develop or strengthen their own approaches to IPC.
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Apart from implementation of TB infection Prevention and Control measures, treatment of those with active TB of the lungs is key in preventing the spread of the TB bacilli. The Public Health Act CAP 242, section 17 classify TB as notifiable infectious disease and under section 26 as part of preventi...on and control of infectious diseases, those exposed or suffer from the notifiable infectious diseases should be isolated in designated place and detained while taking medication until in the assessment of the Medical officer of health confirm that the person is free from infection or able to be discharged without danger to public health.
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The purpose of this document is to offer guidance to Member States on quarantine measures for individuals in the context of COVID-19. It is intended for those responsible for establishing local or national policy for quarantine of individuals, and adherence to infection prevention and control measur...es.
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Investment in all the drivers and facilitators of hand hygiene action in health care to ensure that it occurs at the point of care and other critical moments requires a multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach. WHO describes such an approach as a “multimodal improvement strategy” (MMIS) which is... at the core of its implementation models for hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes. The focus of this document is on the resource considerations for investing in hand hygiene improvement in health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) using the MMIS approach.
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This guidance addresses rationale, risk-based scenarios, practical considerations prior to adoption of the self-testing products, quality assurance, safety and ethical considerations, and data management considerations for COVID-19 self-testing. The Africa CDC recommends the use of rapid antigen sel...f-testing within two key scenarios. The first includes testing for case identification within scenarios with a high risk of infection, including symptomatic cases and contacts of a confirmed case. The second scenario involves general screening within scenarios of low or unknown risk exposure allowing for self-care such as before gatherings with at-risk individuals and prior to participation in events involving members of different households. Within these scenarios, a positive test result indicates likelihood of current infection, while a negative test result indicates a lower risk of active infection, though it does not rule out infection altogether. All positive cases should be managed following the national COVID-19 management protocol of Member States.ssur
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نظرة عامّة على التقنيّات المستخدمة لمعالجة النفايات المُعدِية والحادّة الناتجة عن مرافق الرعاية الصحيّة
This document provides an overview of specific health care waste technologies for the treatment of solid ...infectious and sharp waste. For each technology, details of its operation, effects on the environment and health, requirements for installation, capacities for treating waste, examples of consumables and advantages and disadvantages are described. The document is designed for health care facility administrators and planners, WASH and infection prevention control staff, national planners, donors and partners.
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n response to the outbreak, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has been supporting African Union Member States in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic through a variety of interventions such as non-pharmaceutical interventions, quarantine, testing, isolation, contact t...racing, and clinical management. The Test to Treat guideline aims to increase continental testing efforts and reduce COVID-19 transmission in Africa and put-up response measures to control the impact of the virus, both to limit spread and to reduce substantially the risks of severe health outcomes related to COVID-19 infection. These countermeasures include highly effective vaccines and boosters, rapid testing options for monitoring exposure, and effective therapeutic options for both pre-exposure prevention and treatment of mild-to-moderate disease, oxygen therapy for moderate-severe disease, all of which can potentially be updated efficiently as new variants emerge that may affect the effectiveness of the available tools.
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How do they work in an ICC to prevent or mitigate nosocomial infections?
Are you clear that we can all do something to avoid them?
A simple hand wash can make a difference.
Inés Lavega has a degree in nursing and worked for more than 8 years at the CTI of Hospital Maciel, the first public hospit...al in Uruguay.
She tells us about the intense work of nursing, to control infections.
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Decontamination of medical devices plays an important role in the prevention of health care-associated infections. It includes cleaning, disinfection and/or sterilization. The processes involved in decontamination are complex, require specific infrastructure and equipment, and involve several sequen...tial steps that need to be performed correctly – from device collection and receipt by the decontamination unit to processing, storage and distribution throughout the facility. Quality control procedures (such as validation) at each step of the decontamination process are of the utmost importance to ensure the correct functioning of the equipment and processes. This aide-memoire presents a concise overview of important advice and key elements at a glance.
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