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In order to prevent dogs and children from playing with the waste, most participants said that
they dug some pits behind the patients’ homes and buried the waste. They also flushed the
used water into the toilets and sometimes burnt the waste because the garbage trucks were
unreliable:
“When you are cleaning a person, you need to take a plastic put all the used materials in
there and wrap it properly and tight so because the garbage collectors take too long to come
and collect the waste and you cannot leave them because dogs will eat them up or some
children will play with them. So you make sure that you throw those things dig up a pit for it
so that another person may not get a disease. You can either bury them or just burn and that
dirty water you just pour it into the toilet and flush.” Focus group 6, organisation F)
4.6 Challenges confronted by volunteers regarding infection control practices and
strategies used to deal with the challenges in HBCOs for PLWHA
Volunteers were confronted with various challenges when practicing infection control.
However, they developed some strategies that helped them to deal with these challenges in
order to continue providing care to the patients. The challenges will be presented first
followed by the strategies used to deal with each challenge.
4.6.1 Insufficient materials in HBC Kits
Most participants mentioned that they were receiving home-based care kits every month from
the DoH. Among other materials contained in the kits, gloves, masks and aprons were named
as the most important materials needed for practicing infection control. One HBCC stated,
“Because we do not have anything now and the DoH is not supplying us with Kits. Gloves,
aprons and masks are more important. But of them all we need gloves because with gloves
we can touch patients and perform our duties even without other materials, not that they are
not important but it is because we are pushed into a tight corner we just need to continue
providing our services to patients because they need us we cannot just neglect them so if we
can get enough gloves.” (HBCC, organisation A)
The quantities of the materials contained in HBC kits raised some concerns by all
participants. Findings show that all the materials that were provided in the kits were not
sufficient when compared to the number of patients that most volunteers had to attend to on a
daily basis. This made participants frustrated as shown in the following response:
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