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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Senior Health Reporter
Calls have been made for increased domestic funding towards infection prevention and control to improve the safety of patients and healthcare workers across all the country’s health facilities.
The approach prevents patients, health workers and visitors to health care facilities from being harmed by avoidable infections, including those caused by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, acquired during the provision of health care services.
Healthcare associated infections are among the most frequent adverse events occurring within health service delivery across the world, hence the call for improved funding towards curbing its occurrence.
Speaking during a media briefing while advocating a dedicated infection prevention and control budget organised by the Infection Prevention and Control Association of Zimbabwe Trust (ICAZ-T) yesterday, Ministry of Health and Child Care Nursing Services director Mrs Nyaradzai Chiwara said increased funding would help in building capacity of health workers in infection prevention and control.
“While the country has developed a strong programme for infection prevention and control over the last decade, the Covid-19 pandemic led to the increased demand of this strong and sustainable intervention,” she said.
“However, funding for infection prevention and control interventions is embedded in other programme areas, such as WASH, maternal and child health, sexual reproductive health, emergency preparedness among others.
“We do not have direct funding for these programmes in the Ministry of Health and that is why we are advocating domestic funding for infection prevention and control.”
The country needed to formulate a sustainable plan to fund programmes for infection prevention and control that included capacity development of healthcare workers in infection prevention and control, prevention of healthcare associated infections as well as surveillance of highly infectious diseases like TB, Covid-19 and cholera.
Mrs Chiwara said since infection prevention and control activities and funding were embedded in other programmes, it was difficult to track how much had been spent for specific infection prevention and control interventions and development, in line with the 76th World Health Assembly Resolutions in 2023.
“Therefore combined efforts from Government, corporates and media in ensuring the application of standard precautions such as improved hand hygiene, rational use of antibiotics, environmental cleaning and isolation of infectious cases could reduce the burden on antimicrobial resistance by 85 percent.
“To achieve this, there should be a multi sectoral approach to budget advocacy for infection prevention and control in the areas that contribute to the vision of the global strategy,” she said.
The first Global infection prevention and control report launched last year showed that out of 100 patients in acute care hospitals, seven patients in high income countries and 15 patients in low income countries will acquire at least one healthcare associated infection during their hospital stay.
On average, one in every 10 affected patients will die from their healthcare associated infection.
On the eve of the 2023 hand hygiene day, the World Health Organisation called on all countries to increase their investment in infection prevention and control programmes to ensure quality of care and patient and health workers safety to protect their populations.
Zimbabwe is set to finalise its national infection prevention and control strategy which is now awaiting approval by the Minister of Health and Child Care and will set the tone in the country’s IPC infection prevention and control programming.
ICAZ-T president Dr Celestino Dhege said infection prevention and control involved more than just basic hygiene hence the need for more funding.
“We are looking at a scenario where we are coming out of Covid 19 and we all realised that infection prevention and control was critical in ensuring that we respond effectively.
“If you look at infection prevention and control, it covers a lot of areas, it is not just about washing hands but about waste management, sanitation, hygiene, isolation and all these things need money. For us even the training of health care workers needs resources.
“This is why we are advocating for a better budget,” he said.
He said in as much as there was funding from development partners and private sector, there was need for a good domestic budget for infection prevention and control for the country to be able to deal with infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid, TB and others.
However, health economist within the department of policy and planning in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Mr Gwati Gwati said budget allocations to the Ministry were already falling short of the bids submitted to Treasury.
“We have infection prevention and control at all hospitals and these hospitals submit a budget which is then collated to have the Ministry’s budget submission. This means at that level, we need to have advocacy for infection prevention and control in the hospital plan for us to see components for infection prevention and control being budgeted for.
“Because infection prevention and control is cross cutting and it is embedded in operations so to have it stand alone with a budget, might not be possible for now,” he said.
He said advocacy should be done through technical working groups which should then coordinate to ensure infection prevention and control components are funded from the allocated funds.
Online Reporter