ABSTRACT
We present an age-structured mathematical model of malaria and pneumonia to study the effect of two capacity-building interventions: Integrated Management of Infectious Diseases (IMID) and On-site Support Services (OSS). IMID leads to a reduction in malaria prevalence by more than 2·4% across the [0,5), [5,14) and [14,50) age groups. IMID + OSS reduces it by more than 16·0% across all age groups. IMID decreases pneumonia prevalence by more than 3·0% across all age groups while IMID + OSS decreases it by more than 1·0% across all age groups. The number of malaria and pneumonia deaths is reduced by 7·8% by IMID across all age groups and IMID + OSS decreases this number by 30·5% across all age groups, which translates to saving a life of a child per month. Prevalence of malaria-pneumonia for the [0,5) age group is 0·52% at baseline, and IMID and IMID + OSS reduce it by 6·6% and 23·6%, respectively. There is no change in incidence of malaria or pneumonia disease episodes. The results also indicate that triaging of children contributes more than 50% to the effect of the interventions in reduction of deaths and a range of 14-91% in reduction of disease cases.
Subject(s)
Disease Management , Education, Medical/methods , Health Services Research , Malaria/diagnosis , Malaria/drug therapy , Pneumonia/diagnosis , Pneumonia/drug therapy , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Animals , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Incidence , Infant , Infant, Newborn , Malaria/epidemiology , Malaria/mortality , Male , Middle Aged , Pneumonia/epidemiology , Pneumonia/mortality , Survival Analysis , Uganda/epidemiology , Young AdultABSTRACT
Handwashing is widely accepted as being key to the prevention of hospital-acquired infection but the frequency of handwashing by healthcare workers has been found to be low. A systematic critical literature review was conducted to establish the effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing compliance with handwashing in healthcare workers. The results showed that one-off educational interventions have a very short-term influence on handwashing behaviour. Use of strategically placed reminders, or asking patients to remind staff of the need to conduct handwashing can have a modest but more sustained effect. Feedback of performance can increase levels of handwashing but if feedback is not repeated regularly, then this effect is not maintained over long periods. Automated sinks increase the quality of handwashing but healthcare workers can be discouraged from using these because of the additional time involved. Provision of moisturized soaps appears to make little difference to handwashing behaviour but providing 'dry' hand rubs near patient beds may lead to a minimal increase in the frequency with which staff decontaminate their hands. Multifaceted approaches which combine education with written material, reminders and continued feedback of performance can have an important effect on handwashing compliance and rates of hospital-acquired infection.
