Good Hygiene - Improving Skills and Hospital Practices of Healthcare Professionals to Prevent Maternal and Neonatal Infections in Benin

ongoing

Maternal and neonatal infections are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in Benin. One major cause of peripartum infections is poor hygiene in healthcare facilities. Healthcare professionals are unaware or do not follow good hygiene practices, allowing multidrug-resistant bacteria to spread in hospitals and cause infections. Our Mimin project will address this poor hygiene practice in hospitals and also in remote communities among women who are pregnant or have recently given birth. We will identify key gaps in healthcare practices and current curricula for midwives, nurses, and physicians. Based on our analysis, we will design new education modules that will improve the hygiene training of all healthcare professionals. One module will specifically be designed for the continuing education of professionals already in employment. The second module will apply the Internationalization at Home e-learning approach to create co-education for midwifery students from two different countries. Newly trained professionals will be involved in creating an improved Hospital hygiene and infection prevention programme at six pilot hospitals, including the strengthening of an online technical platform for infection surveillance. In addition, outreach activities will be piloted in six disadvantaged communities to raise awareness of good hygiene practices and neonatal care among mothers. In order to achieve sustainable impact, a new national reference laboratory will be set up to enable the diagnosis and monitoring of pathogens causing blood-borne infections, during the project and in the future. The impact of all our activities will be assessed and the information will be shared with relevant stakeholders and policy makers. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Health have been involved in project planning since the beginning, and thus our results will enable evidence-based decision-making in the design of new health and education policies.