Preparedness of tertiary care hospitals to implement the national TB infection prevention and control guidelines in Bangladesh: A qualitative exploration

In high tuberculosis (TB) burden countries, health settings, including non-designated TB hospitals, host many patients with pulmonary TB. Bangladesh’s National TB Control Program aims to strengthen TB infection prevention and control (IPC) in health settings. However, there has been no published literature to date that assessed the preparedness of hospitals to comply with the recommendations. To address this gap, our study examined healthcare workers knowledge and attitudes towards TB IPC guidelines and their perceptions regarding the hospitals’ preparedness in Bangladesh. Between January to December 2019, we conducted 16 key-informant interviews and four focus group discussions with healthcare workers from two public tertiary care hospitals. In addition, we undertook a review of 13 documents [i.e., hospital policy, annual report, staff list, published manuscript]. Our findings showed that healthcare workers acknowledged the TB risk and were willing to implement the TB IPC measures but identified key barriers impacting implementation. Gaps were identified in: policy (no TB policy or guidelines in the hospital), health systems (healthcare workers were unaware of the guidelines, lack of TB IPC program, training and education, absence of healthcare-associated TB infection surveillance, low priority of TB IPC, no TB IPC monitoring and feedback, high patient load and bed occupancy, and limited supply of IPC resources) and behavioural factors (risk perception, compliance, and self and social stigma). The additional service-level gap was the lack of electronic medical record systems. These findings highlighted that while there is a demand amongst healthcare workers to implement TB IPC measures, the public tertiary care hospitals have got key issues to address. Therefore, the National TB Control Program may consider these gaps, provide TB IPC guidelines to these hospitals, assist them in developing hospital-level IPC manual, provide training, and coordinate with the ministry of health to allocate separate budget, staffing, and IPC resources to implement the control measures successfully.