preparedness for ebola amongst healthcare workers in public health facilities in nairobi city county, kenya

Description

Ebola virus disease, a highly infectious viral condition, has caused the worst epidemics in the West African countries of Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014-2016.In 2018 the virus re-emerged in Democratic Republic of Congo prompting WHO to declare it a public health emergency of international concern with the most recent outbreak in Guinea Bissau in 2021. Kenya is at high risk due to its proximity to the affected countries of DRC and Uganda, its porous borders and its high volume of international flights. Thus, Kenya’s preparedness mode is heightened with measures including reactivation of Ebola Contingency Plan, conducting simulation exercise at Kenyatta National Hospital and mapping of the counties based on their Ebola risk levels instituted albeit at the national level. However, less attention has been given in terms of preparedness to the healthcare workers at critical service delivery points at the Public health facilities in high risky Nairobi City County. This prompted the need to identify the organizational support for healthcare workers, their risk perceptions and socio-demographic characteristics associated with Ebola preparedness amongst healthcare workers in Public health facilities in Kibra sub-county. A cross-sectional descriptive study design was adopted and 165 established as the sample size. Response rate stood at 95% with 157 of the 165 health care workers fully participating. Probability proportionate to size together with simple random sampling was used. Data was analysed using statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) version 23, where both descriptive frequencies and inferential statistics generated. Chi-square was used to establish associations between variables. Ebola preparedness was assessed using three criteria of capacity to detect Ebola case, protect staffs and notify for action. Majority of the healthcare workers felt unprepared (66%). Socio-demographic characteristic was found to be associated with healthcare workers’ Ebola preparedness with age (χ2=21.; df=3; P<0.001) and professional cadre (χ2=28.901; df=7,P<0.001) emerging significant predictors. Younger respondents were found to be less prepared for Ebola. It further revealed that healthcare workers with low perceived risk were more prepared for Ebola (χ2=6.854, df=1, P=0.009). Besides, several organizational support factors such as access to hand sanitizers (χ2 =13.893,df=1,P<0.001), pairs of gloves (χ2=11.863,df=1,P=0.001), holding Ebola related briefs (χ2=11.144,df=1,P=0.001), risk alert sharing (χ2=27.081,df=1,P<0.001) having participated in Ebola training (χ2 =11.144,df=1, P=0.001) and whether contents of the preparedness plan was availed (χ2 =7.303,df=1,P=0.007) were established to be associated with Ebola preparedness. Conclusively, the study established socio-demographic characteristics, risk perceptions and organizational support to be significantly associated with Ebola preparedness. To fill the limitation of this study, there is need to undertake similar study on healthcare workers preparedness for Ebola in both Public and private health facilities across counties with a view to increase sample size for wider generalizability of the findings.