ArticleBMC public health2020
The role of medical equipment in the spread of nosocomial infections: a cross-sectional study in four tertiary public health facilities in Uganda.
Article in BMC public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Healthcare-Associated Infection Causes and Mitigation Strategies:Saudi medical journal · 2026Pooled it
- Microbial Contamination of Radiology Equipment: A Descriptive Study in Ghana.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Societal Economic Burden of Antibiotic Resistance in Uganda: A Cost of Illness Study.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2026Article
- Exploring protein adenylyltransferase as a therapeutic target for combating ESKAPE pathogens in hospital-acquired infections.Molecular biology reports · 2025Review
- Prevalence and associated factors of nosocomial infection among children admitted at Jimma Medical Center, Southwest Ethiopia: a retrospective study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2025Article
- Healthcare-Associated Infections in a Tertiary Care Hospital: Significance of Patient Referral Practices.The East African health research journal · 2024Article
- Health care worker carriage of drug-resistant bacteria and infection control practices at a tertiary care hospital in Uganda: a cross-sectional survey.The Pan African medical journal · 2023Article
- Biosensors forSensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- On prioritising global health's triple crisis of sepsis, COVID-19 and antimicrobial resistance: a mixed-methods study from Malawi.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Hurdle technology using encapsulated enzymes and essential oils to fight bacterial biofilms.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWith many medical equipment in hospitals coming in direct contact with healthcare workers, patients, technicians, cleaners and sometimes care givers, it is important to pay close attention to their capacity in harboring potentially harmful pathogens. The goal of this study was to assess the role that medical equipment may potentially play in hospital acquired infections in four public health facilities in Uganda.
methodsA cross-sectional study was conducted from December 2017 to January 2018 in four public health facilities in Uganda. Each piece of equipment from the neonatal department, imaging department or operating theatre were swabbed at three distinct points: a location in contact with the patient, a location in contact with the user, and a remote location unlikely to be contacted by either the patient or the user. The swabs were analyzed for bacterial growth using standard microbiological methods. Seventeen bacterial isolates were randomly selected and tested for susceptibility/resistance to common antibiotics. The data collected analyzed in STATA version 14.
resultsA total of 192 locations on 65 equipment were swabbed, with 60.4% of these locations testing positive (116/192). Nearly nine of ten equipment (57/65) tested positive for contamination in at least one location, and two out of three equipment (67.7%) tested positive in two or more locations. Of the 116 contaminated locations 52.6% were positive for Bacillus Species, 14.7% were positive for coagulase negative staphylococcus, 12.9% (15/116) were positive for E. coli, while all other bacterial species had a pooled prevalence of 19.8%. Interestingly, 55% of the remote locations were contaminated compared to 66% of the user contacted locations and 60% of the patient contacted locations. Further, 5/17 samples were resistant to at least three of the classes of antibiotics tested including penicillin, glycylcycline, tetracycline, trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole and urinary anti-infectives.
conclusionThese results provides strong support for strengthening overall disinfection/sterilization practices around medical equipment use in public health facilities in Uganda. There's also need for further research to make a direct link to the bacterial isolates identified and cases of infections recorded among patients in similar settings.
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Registered trials
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