Abstract

Introduction: Globally, it is known for the last four decades, that the majority of Health Care- Associated Infections
(HCAIs) can be prevented by adequate, though not necessarily sophisticated, surveillance and control measures. A
number of international initiatives are being undertaken to support developing countries to build and implement
infection control effectively in their health care settings. A descriptive and cross sectional, was carried out to assess
the knowledge and practices on infection prevention and control measures at Jinja regional referral hospital.The
objectives of the study were to establish the knowledge of health workers on infection control and to establish the
practices of health workers towards infection prevention and control. Convenience sampling technique was used to
select 34 health workers at the hospital during the period of data collection. Majority of respondents 20(58.8%) had
been in service for more than 3 years, while only 3(8.8%) had been in service for less than a year. Findings on
knowledge about infection control revealed that the majority of health workers knew that the yellow colour code is
meant to collect sharp wastes, 18(52.9%) of them knew the red colour code is meant to collect highly infectious
wastes, while black was mentioned by 11(32.5%) to collect noninfectious wastes. Regarding practices on infection
control, 88% participants mentioned hand washing as a method of infection control and the least mentioned waste
segregation in specific bin liners. The majority of the participants (79.41%) have knowledge on wastes segregations.
The researcher concluded that all the health workers had a substantial level of knowledge on infection prevention
and control. However, this knowledge was mainly theoretical since the health workers could correctly mention
infection prevention and control measures but most of them were not being practiced. The researcher recommended
that through the guidance of the hospital management, an infection control and prevention committee should be
established which should set performance objectives and hold regular period reports to evaluate the performance of
the health center on infection prevention