A message from EngenderHealth's President

About This Course

EngenderHealth is a leading international nonprofit organization in the field of reproductive health. This course draws upon our practical experience working in partnership with health care providers in the developing world to prevent the spread of infections.

Infection prevention practices are crucial to the safety of health workers, individuals obtaining health care, and the communities in which they live. Even with limited staff, equipment, and funds, health care facilities in the developing world can fight deadly diseases such as HIV infection and hepatitis B by following some simple, cost-effective procedures.

This online infection prevention course is designed to help health care providers (including doctors, medical officers, nurses, midwives, and medical/surgical assistants), supervisors of health care facilities, and medical/nursing students develop or strengthen their ability to protect themselves, their clients, and members of the surrounding community from infections. The internationally accepted practices covered in this course use low-tech approaches that are practical, simple, easy to use, and generally inexpensive.

Topics covered in this course:

Disease transmission
Handwashing
Gloving
Aseptic technique
Surgical scrub and surgical attire
Use and disposal of needles and other sharps
Instrument processing (including decontamination, cleaning, sterilization and high-level disinfection, and storage)
Housekeeping
Waste disposal

Although the information provided in this course is applicable to any facility, this course is geared toward staff who work in low-resource settings. For this pilot version of this course, participants should be highly literate in English and should be highly motivated to participate in this course. Ideally, participants should be working or preparing to work in a health facility in a developing world country. Wherever possible, we have attempted to provide guidance for the lowest-cost methods of infection prevention and have provided alternatives for facilities that may experience frequent power outages or may be without running water and other basic supplies.

About EngenderHealth's computer-based training projects

One key to providing assistance with lasting impact is to focus on training--the training of local health care providers and of local trainers. Staff training has continually been identified as a priority need in developing world health facilities, but while donors and others have committed substantial resources to training, hospitals and clinics throughout the world have found that many training needs are not being met.

There is a strong need for training that reaches more people, maximizes the impact of limited training resources, cuts down on group classroom time that may interfere with clinic services, and decreases the travel costs associated with centralized training.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, EngenderHealth has initiated a three-year pilot project to deliver Web and CD-ROM training to staff working in health facilities in the developing world. For the first course in this project, we selected an important topic that lends itself well to the technology of computer-based training: infection prevention training for staff who work in low-resource settings in developing countries.

Adequate infection prevention is crucial to the safety of both health workers and individuals obtaining health care. With limited staff, training, equipment, and funds, developing world health care institutions are, unfortunately, ideal settings for the transmission of deadly diseases, such as HIV infection and hepatitis B.

The EngenderHealth Infection Prevention Training CD-ROM is currently available for order.

A High-Tech Solution for Low-Tech Settings

EngenderHealth believes that computer-based instruction, delivered in a variety of settings through CD-ROM or over the Internet, has enormous implications for the future reach of health education and training. Computer-based instruction has the potential to vastly expand training capacity that is both on-site and interactive. Although computer-based instruction and distance learning have become a mainstay of medical training in the developed world, very little has been done as yet to use computer-based instruction for health personnel in the developing world.

Most developing countries are just beginning to acquire Internet connectivity, but the world is changing fast. EngenderHealth and our in-country partners are exploring innovative ways of disseminating educational materials and helping individual health care facilities build the technical capacity for computer- and Internet-based training. As we enter the "Information Age" of public health, the latest information technology can change the very fabric of global health, even in low-resource settings.

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