Preventing infections in hospital: Action research at the University Hospital in Bujumbura (Burundi)

This action research, carried out at the University Hospital in Bujumbura (Burundi), was requested because of a local demand for change in view of the importance of health risks at the hospital, both for health professionals and for patients, and in order to assess the limits of knowledge and methodologies as they were presented in research studies that had already been carried out. The problematic of this action research is part of an approach to institutional and professional functioning, the theme of transmissible diseases being conceived as revealing this functioning in a context marked by the development of the AIDS epidemic and a climate of civil war. Together with the group of research participants at the hospital, the Franco-Burundi multidisciplinary team contributed to making technical and organizational arrangements in the service of prevention. They analyzed the interdependence between representations of risks and professional practices, in their double relationship of determination and consequence.