The current practices in preventing nosocomial tuberculosis among the government hospitals in Thailand : A nationwide survey.

Abstract

A nationwide descriptive study was conducted in order to describe the current practices in preventing nosocomial tuberculosis among Thai government hospitals and to compare with the 2002 results. During June and September of 2006, 385 self-administered questionnaires were sent to 60 bed and up-size government hospitals. Two hundreds and ninetythree of them were returned,giving a response rate of 76 percent. There was no statistical difference among the respondents according to their geographical distributions and hospital types. The coverage of implementing six tuberculosis prevention and control measures adapted from the CDCûs and WHOûs guidelines for the prevention of tuberculosis in healthcare facilities was poor. Two-thirds of the hospitals were not implementing fully the three recommended measures named the assignment of responsibility,the early identification of TB suspects and the isolation of suspected patients in their day-to-day practices. The implementation rates of each of the six depicted measures in this study were as follows, the assignment of responsibility 93 percent, the use of N95 (or better) respirator 66 percent,the early identification of TB suspects 61 percent, the isolation of suspected patients 44 percent,the regular HCW-TB education 35 percent and the surveillance of tuberculous infection or tuberculosis in HCWs 23 percent. In comparison to the 2002 survey results, there are increases in implementations of all six abovementioned measures. Four of which have reached statistical significances are the early identification of TB suspects, the isolation of suspected patients, the use of N95 (or better) respirator, and the regular HCW-TB education.