Preliminary Exploration of Infection Prevention and Control and Antibiotic Stewardship to Avert Antibiotic Resistance in Kenyan Hospitals (IPC Study)

The study is collaboration between the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Health Sector Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Kenya Ministry of Health, University of Oxford and Water, Sanitation and Health officers at Geneva WHO headquarters. The research will describe the context ultimately influencing current Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) and Antibiotic Stewardship (ABS) practice in Kenya. Firstly, this will involve connecting with and describing the role of, all of the relevant stakeholders, as well as analysing all of the national policy documents they have produced. We then want to analyse the situation at the county and hospital level to get a sense of how these policy documents are being translated into action. As part of this research we will conduct a survey of resources to effect IPC-ABS in hospitals using an adapted WASH-FIT tool that also comprises an antibiotic stewardship module and a patient safety module. We will also conduct a separate survey looking at consumption of antibiotics in inpatient services in relation to clinical diagnosis. Our aim is to analyse all of these data points together with the stakeholders so that we can formulate a list of potential comprehensive interventions to improve IPC-ABS, and we can recommend a list of indicators that could help the Kenya Ministry of Health to monitor and evaluate interventions in this area.

Objective

To develop contextual knowledge that can inform the systematic formulation of (complex) behaviour change/comprehensive interventions to improve IPC-ABS and patient safety in Kenyan hospitals, and to identify indicators of IPC-ABS behaviours, performance and health outcomes that can be used to evaluate and monitor future interventions.