Tackling outbreaks of infectious diseases in primary health care

Introduction: Currently, infectious diseases remain a concern. Despite advances in medical knowledge and the development of primary care, the occurrence of cases of communicable diseases is frequent. Objectives: Assess the level of knowledge on confronting outbreaks by primary health care professionals in the province of Havana, and implement and evaluate the impact of an intervention strategy used in order to raise the knowledge acquired. Method: A quasi-experimental study. Twenty-five primary care professionals made up the universe. They worked in health centers or municipal epidemiology units of the west municipalities of the former Havana province. At a first stage, a questionnaire made and tested by experts was applied, then a course of confrontation to outbreaks of infectious diseases was given, finally the impact of the strategy was evaluated through the level of knowledge acquired by professionals. Results: Before intervention, 52.0% of the professionals were evaluated unsatisfactory in overall test score. After the intervention, 88.0% of physicians had satisfactory results, showing an overall increase of 83.33% for satisfactory answers. By using McNemar test to compare proportions, statistical significance was found generally to the obtained values of p <0.05. Conclusions: The level of knowledge on tackling outbreaks of infectious diseases in primary health care was unsatisfactory in most of the respondents before the intervention. The training strategy used was effective in getting professionals to have sounder knowledge.