Introduction Nosocomial infections due to poor hand hygiene are a major cause of increasing morbidity, mortality, and health care costs among hospitalized patients worldwide. Hand hygiene is mandatory to prevent the transmission of health care associated infections especially where infectious diseases are common like Sub-Saharan Africa. Hand washing compliance among health professionals in general is unacceptably low especially in developing countries like Ethiopia. Method Institution-based cross-sectional study design was used to assess the knowledge and practice of hand washing among health professionals working in Dubti Referral Hospital. Structured self-administered pretested questionnaires were used. The data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 23. Result Out of 91 respondents, majority, 60 (65.9%), of them were knowledgeable and 31 (34.1%) were not knowledgeable. However, the majority of health professionals, 51 (56.0%), had poor practice and 40 (43.0%) of them had good practice of hand washing. Conclusion Majority of health professionals were knowledgeable. However, they had poor practice of hand washing.

Background: In the past 20 years, the overall incidence of health care associated infections has increased by 36%. It is estimated that more than 1.4 million people worldwide are suffering from infections acquired in hospitals. Sub Saharan Africa harbors the largest population of people living with infectious disease mainly with HIV/ AIDS including Ethiopia. Methodology: Institution-based cross sectional study was employed; and data was collected using selfadministered questionnaires. Data analysis was carried out manually by using tally and calculator, and descriptive summaries were used to describe the study variables like frequency tables and charts. Result: 50.55% of health care workers had good knowledge; 69.23% had positive attitude and 48.35% had safe practice of infection prevention. Above half (51.65%) of them had unsafe practice of infection prevention. Conclusion:Health care workers' knowledge, attitude and practice towards infection prevention in Dubti Referral Hospital were not sufficient, favorable and safe enough to the expected standard. There were gaps regarding infection prevention practice like proper utilization of personal protective equipments.

To improve tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis, many national TB programmes have committed to deploying Xpert(®) MTB/RIF. Implementation of this relatively new technology has suffered from a lack of comprehensive technical assistance, however, including the formulation of policies and plans to address operational issues. While providing technical assistance, we observed numerous operational challenges in the implementation and scale-up of Xpert in five sub-Saharan African countries: low coverage, poor laboratory infrastructure, limited access, poor linkages to treatment, inadequate data on outcomes, problems with specimen transport, diagnostic algorithms that are not aligned with updated World Health Organization recommendations on target patient groups and financing challenges. We recommend better country preparedness and training, laboratory information and quality systems, supply management and referral mechanisms.