By Ally Jamah

Kenya must take urgent steps to ensure safety of patients in health facilities.

Health experts said three out of 10 patients end up being infected with another disease after visiting a health facility.

The call was made during a regional workshop on Infection, Prevention, Control (IPC), which ended on Thursday in Nairobi.

Medical Services Minister Anyang’ Nyong’o who attended the conference blamed the situation on crumbling health infrastructure and poor hygiene.

He, however, promised swift action to reverse the trend.

"Most infection prevention techniques are cheap and simple to implement. Our health facilities need to take a fresh look at their safety standards," the minister said.

Prof Nyong’o said proper IPC strategies would save many lives of patients and health workers who are frequently exposed to serious diseases like Tuberculosis and HIV and Aids in hospital settings.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), 10 to 30 per cent of all hospital admissions result in hospital-acquired infections, which have resulted in high number of deaths.

Nyong’o promised a new IPC policy to combat infectious diseases was in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Public Health has launched a strategy to lower the presence and death rate of malaria by two thirds.

The National Malaria Strategy for 2009-2017 divides the country into four parts for effectiveness.

While launching the strategy, Public Health Assistant Minister James Gesami said adoption of a blanket nationwide approach in the fight against malaria has been ineffective in lowering prevalence of the disease.

Instead, a multi-sector approach was adopted where four epidemiological zones based on transmission were identified: Endemic, highland epidemic prone, arid seasonal and low risk.

The zones were allocated more than Sh1billion to implement preventive measures to curb the spread, which is objective number one in the strategy. Seasonal transmission that made the whole population vulnerable cripple efforts to combat malaria, hence the hefty allocation.