Background: Health care workers (HCW) are at risk of occupational infection with blood-borne pathogens (BBP).
Aim of the study: 1) to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of nurses, lab technicians and housekeepers working in nine Primary Health Care centers in Cairo and Giza governorates in Egypt concerning BBP; 2) to apply a health education intervention on BBP; 3) to assess the effectiveness of the health education intervention on the level of KAP of the study population.
Methods: A total of 130 study participants were enrolled and received the health education intervention, only 86 participants came back for the post-intervention evaluation (drop-out rate = 33.8%).
Results: It was found that 34% of participants were exposed to one or more needle stick injuries during the 3 months preceding the intervention, and only 13.8% received the hepatitis B immunization. Comparison of the pre- and post-intervention scores for the total study population showed a significant increase in the post-intervention cumulative KAP score, as well as the knowledge, attitude and practice scores by about 13, 12, 11 and 20% respectively (p<0.001). The housekeepers, compared to nurses and lab technicians, were the best recipients to the health education intervention with a significantly higher percent change of the KAP score (27.7, 16.9 and 9.5% respectively, p=0.005). Reasons for non-compliance to the application of preventive measures to protect against BBP were lack of resources, work overload and lack of training.
Conclusion and recommendations: Continuous education and in-service training on prevention of BBP transmission is mandatory to protect HCW.