By Kuda Pembere
The Ministry of Health and Child Care’s Nursing Services Director Mrs Nyaradzai Chiwara has called for stand-alone funding for Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) in the country’s health facilities to help improve patient safety while reducing transmission of infections.
She said this officiating an Infection Prevention and Control Association of Zimbabwe Trust (ICAZ-T) organized media briefing on advocating for a dedicated IPC budget.
As is the norm, since IPC cuts across the health sector for quality health provision, it was often neglected as a separate discipline, getting included amongst other Health Ministry’s budget focus areas.
“According to the World Health Organization, infection prevention and control is a practical, evident, best approach preventing patients and health workers from being harmed by avoidable infections. While the country has developed a strong IPC program, that’s IPC is the shortcut of infection prevention and control.
“The last decade, the COVID-19 led to the decrease, to increase the demand of this strong and sustainable IPC intervention. IPC program in Zimbabwe is under the Nursing Service Directorate as alluded before, and however the IPC interventions is embedded in other program areas, whether in the municipal field or private sectors. That is the WASH, Maternal and Child Health, Sexual Reproductive Health, Emergency and Preparedness,” she said.
She said through direct funding, they are able to improve capacitation of health workers in IPC.
“Also there is what we call Patient Safety and Antimicrobial Resistance. They always call it AMR. And having all these programs, what are we saying? We don’t have direct funding for these programs in the Ministry of Health.
“That’s why we are here advocating for this budget, the domestic budget for IPC to formulate a sustainable plan to fund the IPC programs. That includes capacity development of health care workers in IPC training and formulation of career structure for IPC professionals, prevention of health care associated infections and surveillance of highly infectious diseases like the tuberculosis,” Mrs Chiwara said.
ICAZ-T president Dr Celestino Dhege said with the COVID-19 pandemic putting IPC on the spotlight, its relevance goes beyond that pandemic as it helps nations to be better prepared for the next outbreaks and pandemics.
“We are looking at a scenario where we are coming out of COVID-19 and we all realize that infection prevention was very important, was critical in ensuring that we respond effectively to COVID-19. So, and there was quite a lot of money needed to be able to respond. And if you look at IPC, it covers a whole range of areas. It’s not just about washing hands. It’s about waste management. It’s about sanitation. It’s about hygiene,” he said.
He noted that they need domestic funding from both the public and private sectors.
“And for us, even the training of healthcare workers, to give them skills, we need the resources, we need money for us to be able to do that. That’s why we are advocating for a better budget, domestic budget.
“Yes, in terms of response, you tend to get the funding from development partners, you also get funding from the private sector.
“We should, that should continue, but we would hope that government can also allocate a good budget for infection prevention and control.
“Since we all now know that we have infectious diseases, we still have cholera, we still have typhoid around, and the other infectious diseases, we need to have a budget to be able to respond.
“Not only just to respond, we also need a budget to ensure that we improve our sanitation, we improve our water, the water quality, the water availability, we improve our waste management, we need to have incinerators so that we can also dispose our waste properly even in our bin setups.
“They need to be supported so that we make sure that we don’t continue to see diseases that we can easily prevent. So that’s why we definitely need a budget that is dedicated to IPC,” he said.
ICAZ-T director Mrs Alethea Mashamba said it was important to fund IPC for the better handling of future outbreaks.
“So you put in place the correct measures according to the mode of transmission of a disease, they know what measures to put in place to prevent transmission within the institutions to other patients, to themselves, and to visitors.
“It’s responsible for developing the program at an institution, establishing those structures multidisciplinary and ensure that those structures meet on a regular basis. And then they translate the national policies into their own institutional policy, depending on the resources that they have. I mentioned training, outbreak response. They should be able to respond to outbreaks, not wait for the ministry to say, oh, you have cholera, you have dysentery in your hospital, you have TB, can you do this?,” she said.
According to latest World Health Organization (WHO) IPC report and strategy, 15 percent of patients in low and middle income countries have had at least one healthcare centre associated infection compared to the 7 percent in high income countries.
