Hand hygiene: A self reported practice among health care workers in tertiary health institutions in Plateau State, Nige

Background: Effective hand hygiene is the simplest proven and most cost effective means of reducing hospital acquired infections both among the health care providers and the receipts of health care services.   Hospital acquired infections have currently been identified as one of the challenges of health care delivery worldwide in view of its contribution to morbidity and mortality. Hence, it became imperative to assess the knowledge and practices of hand hygiene as well as its determinant among frontline health care workers in tertiary health institutions in Jos Plateau state Nigeria.Methodology: This was a cross sectional study conducted among 236 health care workers in two tertiary health institutions using quantitative method of data collection. Epi info version 7 was used for data analysis, Chi square test was used with odds ratio as point estimates and 95% confidence interval as the interval estimate. A probability value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: The mean age of the respondents was 37.1 ± 7.2 years while 121 (51.3%) of the respondents had good knowledge of hand hygiene and self reported good hand hygiene practice found among 134 (56.8%) of the health care workers.Conclusion: This study has brought to light the unsatisfactory level of practice of hand hygiene among health workers and the need to urgently provide interventions to addressing it.