Abstract:
Background: Examination gloves are used in health facilities to protect health professional and patients from the risk of infection and they are used to reduce opportunities for cross-transmission of micro-organisms. Poor quality Examination gloves can expose health workers to infectious like Covid19, Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS and other contagious disease.
Objectives: This study was conducted to assess the quality of examination gloves with emphasis on holes detection and assessment through geometrical dimension measurement in Addis Ababa health facilities.
Method: This was a cross sectional study conducted by collecting random sampling from Addis Ababa health facilities and analysis (testing for quality) is done in the Ethiopian Food and Drug
laboratory for holes detection and geometrical dimension measurement.
Results: Out of five brands of gloves tested on dimension (width) for GBC and GBD, only 0.4%
gloves were found out of specification, while tests on dimension (Length) for GBA, GBB and GBD
are 4.2%, 0.7% and 11.2% were found to be out of specification respectively. For dimension
(thickness), however none of the brands were having out of specification results. The result for
hole detection using water tight (leakage test) were out of specification for all the brands with leakage rates of 14.7 for GBA, 5.7 for GBB, 21.9 for GBC, 16.7 for GBD and 14.5 for GBE which was far higher values as compared to the level of AQL established by the EFDA allows a glove leakage rate of 2.5% for examination gloves. Conclusion: About 15% of the examination gloves examined in Addis Ababa had holes. This poses a substantial risk for transmission of infection in health care settings.
Recommendation: The regulatory body must strengthen efforts to minimize the availability of sub-standard examination gloves in the local market by enhancing post marketing surveillance and inspection of company’s good manufacturing practice of examination gloves.
...............Thesis available at ACIPH Library