Health Conditions of Hospitals in Nepal
Effective functioning of health-care facilities depends on its Environmental Health condition. Environmental Health basically includes safe and adequate water, good sanitation, cleanliness of the surrounding as well as hospital premises, beds, bed sheets (linen), and toilets and at the same time, these should be properly disinfected too. Additionally, safe injection, environment sound health-care waste management, control and substitute of hazards chemical like Mercury and other disinfecting agents such as Cidex (Gluterdehyde) etc. In addition health facilities should be like a healthy workplace which depends on physical, environmental, psychological and public relations.
In order to study the overall environmental health condition, mixture of predesigned strategically designed methodology consisting direct field survey, patient survey, focus group discussion and direct observation of the health-care facilities of statistically drawn 13% sampled hospitals out of all 234 existing health-care facilities of Nepal representing geographical regions (East, central, west and Mid to Far West), eco-regions (Himal, Hill and Terai) and type (Government, community and Private) and settings (urban and rural); and conditional selection process in consultation with WHO. Further methodology process includes review of relevant document and policies, develop and testing of different set of questionnaire for the hospital, patients and FGD, field survey and observation, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, report writing, stakeholder consultation and submission. Field survey was carried out by teaming up two experts (team leader and investigators) assisted by a local facilitators as well as facilitators from the hospitals under study.
The main objectives of this study is to develop evidence based paper on overall Environmental Health Condition of selected hospitals of Nepal through review of existing legal and institutional frameworks as well as investigating environmental health condition by employing detailed questionnaire survey, spot observation and FGDs with communities members.
Reports has been prepared and published and disseminated. It include analysis of some 63 reserach componnet associated with overall environmental health condition of the health care facilities ranges from water to waste management.