Table of Contents
ABSTRACT
The age range of children attending Child Care Centers (CCC) is between 0-5 years and these children are more likely to acquire communicable diseases due to several factors as compared to children cared for at home. Schools and CCC have been identified as transmission hubs in models of the spread of diseases within the community. This study aimed at assessing the infection prevention practice among caregivers and the effect on occurrence of infection in Child Care Centers. This study utilized a cross-sectional quantitative research design; multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents from both public and primary school owned Child Care Centers within Sagamu Local Government of Ogun state Nigeria. 262 respondents were recruited; twenty respondents were from public school-owned Child Care Centers and 242 were from the private school-owned Child Care Centers. Only the practice of hand hygiene was reported to be conducted always 213 (81.1), other assessed infection preventive measures such as nasal hygiene, cleaning and disinfecting, diaper management, and management of sick children had very low scores, 37.4%, 36.5%, 27.5% and 39.6% respectively. The infection among children in Child Care Centers revealed a high frequency of occurrence of these symptoms; running nose, blocked nose, cough, sneezing with the following result respectively 73.3%, 49.6%, 66.8%, and 53.1%. The study showed a significant correlation between the measures of infection prevention and the occurrence of infection among the children. Hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfectant, diaper hygiene, management of sick children and nasal hygiene were significant at P-value of 0.000. The caregivers needs to be trained on how to carry out effective infection prevention practice at the preemployment stage and also periodically, possibly before resumption for new academic term schools in other to reduce the high occurrence of infection among the children. Likewise guideline should be developed for infection prevention in CCC.
Keywords: Children, child care center, infection prevention, child health, Nigeria
