Biosafety Intervention and Follow up Assessment in Laboratory Workers of Karachi, Pakistan

Background: Regular trainings and capacity building are requir ed for all health care workers to ensure that they follow the laid down standard operating procedures and thus av oid any mishap. Delays in such trainings and improp er supervision results in their reverting back to their old habits . Objectives: Post intervention assessment of laboratory workers of public and private sector hospitals of Karachi on adherence to biosafety practices. Study type and duration: Quantitative-qualitative cross-sectional survey don e from August-November, 2012 using simple random sampling. Subjects and Methods: Study population comprised of 253 laboratory workers of public and private sector hospital laboratories of Karachi. An initial KAP survey on b iosafety practices in the laboratories and their wo rkers followed by training and a post intervention evaluation was don e in 2008. Four years later these workers were re-e valuated using an anonymous closed ended questionnaire to assess how many are following the training and the standard gu idelines. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS 13.0. Mean and percentages were calculated for quantitative variab les and x 2 - test was applied for significance. Results: A total of 253 participants (168 males and 85 femal es) returned the filled questionnaire Almost all (9 8.8%) laboratory workers had correct concept on use of pe rsonal protective equipment, 85% were neither pract icing mouth pipetting for chemical and biological samples, nor using laboratories for eating and drinking purposes while importance of SOP/BOP and laboratory accident record maintenance was acknowledged by over 95%. Knowledge about discarding the used syringe was present in only 68%. A comparison between public and private sector laboratory worker s revealed that 37% public sector workers were still discarding syr inges in the dustbin as opposed to 3% from private sector. Conclusion: Educational interventions performed almost 4 years ago were still followed by laboratory workers indic ating the importance of at least one training every 2-3 y ears to sensitize them on biosafety.