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edridden patient, how to maintain a clean environment for clients and how to dispose of the
used gloves and other waste properly. They also learnt how to improvise when they did not
have materials:
“Infection control practices are the ways in which we protect ourselves from diseases when
we are doing our work on our patients. So you see! We have gained quite a lot of skills.
Honestly, we didn’t know anything when we came here. Now we know that you don’t
necessarily have to pick up a sick person who does not walk to the bathroom, but you can
bed-bath them and change their diaper, linen and clothes without using too much effort of
lifting them. We now have a lot we have learnt on how to comfort the patient, giving them
hope not discriminate them, teaching family members how to do the work, love and care for
their patient. With sexually transmitted diseases, we now have knowledge about them the
types, signs and everything, and about T.B we are able to use masks and gloves to protect
ourselves and also to explain to people how they must protect themselves from STDs or T.B.
(Focus group 1, organisation A)
“Home based care training has really helped us because we did not know a lot of things. We
now even know how to take care of ourselves from infections and how to take care of our
families. And for the patients, we know how to care for them. We now have the knowledge of
what to do in certain situations when a patient has a certain condition or even when you
don’t have material you can use what is there like plastic for bread if you don’t have gloves
and salt to clean the wounds”. (Focus group 7, organisation G)
4.4.2 Materials for infection control practices
Materials are important for effective infection control practices by volunteer caregivers.
Findings revealed that most participants from all organisations received home based care kits
which they called “green bags” that contained various materials for medication and infection
control supplied by the Department of Health (DoH). During focus group discussions,
participants were asked to discuss and list the materials that were supplied in the HBC kits in
order of their importance. Across all organisations, findings reviewed that, in terms of
infection control practices, protective clothing were the most important. Materials that were
used for practicing hygiene and for waste disposal were seen to be important compared to
medication materials. Table 4.3 below shows the materials contained in the kits in order of
importance as mentioned by caregivers.
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