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Hindi ASSESSMENT OF PREVALENCE OF HEALTH CARE WORKERS OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO HIV/AIDS AND POST EXPOSURE PROPHYLAXIS IN DILLA UNIVERSITY REFERAL HOSPITAL, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA
*Corresponding Author:
Copyright: © 2020 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: Occupational injuries are injuries like needle stick or cut with a sharp object or contact of mucous membrane or non-intact skin (e.g.., Exposed skin that is chapped, abraded, or afflicted with dermatitis) with blood, tissue or other potentially infectious body fluid. Each day thousands of Health Care Workers (HCWs), Around the World, Suffers accidental occupational injuries. These injuries can result in a variety of serious and distressing consequence. This study will help the healthcare workers to know the severity and prevalence, to minimize its impact, to be safe in their working environment, and remain healthy.
Objective: To assess the prevalence of occupational exposure to HIV and Post Exposure Prophylaxis usage among health care workers in Dilla University Referral Hospital, Gedeo Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia.
Methods and Materials: A descriptive cross-sectional institution based study was conducted from May 1-30 in Dilla University Referral Teaching Hospital. Data was collected using semi structured interviewer administered questionnaire from 272 participants by simple random sampling method. The collected data was entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics and chi-square test was employee to assess association among variables. Additionally the data was arranged and presented using different tables and graphs. P-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
Result: From a total of 272 healthcare workers involved in this study, and revealed that occupational exposure to blood and body fluid were 76.1%, among the exposed healthcare professionals 11.4% use post-exposure prophylaxis. Majority of the exposed health profession were found to be nurses which accounts (36.1%). Out of 76.1% exposed to HIV risk, 39.7% sustained needle stick injury nearly all (80.1) perceived that personal protective equipments can prevent from occupational risk to HIV infection.
Conclusion and Recommendation: This study showed that occupational exposure to HIV were common among healthcare workers and continue to occur presenting a very real of HIV infection, and the utilization of post-exposure prophylaxis among healthcare profession was low. Dilla university referral hospital should make available within their system a standardize written protocol for infection prevention and reporting unit for management of occupational exposure, and to increase the utilization of post-exposure prophylaxis
