Practices around the use of masks and respirators among hospital health care workers in 3 diverse populations

Use of personal protective equipment to protect against respiratory infections in Pakistan: A systematic review

“…After reviewing titles and abstracts, 46 studies were selected for full text review. Finally, 13 articles were included in this review (Table 1) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. We only found observational/cross-sectional studies on the use of PPE for infectious diseases in healthcare settings in Pakistan.…”

“…No clinical trials or laboratory-based studies on the use of PPE in such settings were found. Seven studies examined the use of PPE in hospital [20][21][22][23]25] and among those, two examined the PPE perceptions among medical students [24] or pharmacy students [32]. Two studies were conducted in the laboratory settings [26,27] while, four in dental settings [28][29][30][31] Two studies focused on the use of PPE for influenza [24,32], two were for tuberculosis [20,25] and nine studies were on multiple respiratory diseases, including influenza [21,22] or general infections [23,[26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…Seven studies examined the use of PPE in hospital [20][21][22][23]25] and among those, two examined the PPE perceptions among medical students [24] or pharmacy students [32]. Two studies were conducted in the laboratory settings [26,27] while, four in dental settings [28][29][30][31] Two studies focused on the use of PPE for influenza [24,32], two were for tuberculosis [20,25] and nine studies were on multiple respiratory diseases, including influenza [21,22] or general infections [23,[26][27][28][29][30][31]. Only two studies examined the use of PPE alone [21,22], while other studies examined other infection control practices as well [20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

“…Guidelines and standard operating procedures on PPE do not exist in most of the hospitals [23] or laboratories [26,27] in Pakistan. Two studies examined the guidelines and current practices on the use of face masks/respirators for influenza, tuberculosis and SARS in Pakistan [21,22]. Recommendations on the use of masks were reported to be inconsistent and different types of product were recommended and used in various healthcare settings [21,22].…”

Policies on the use of respiratory protection for hospital health workers to protect from coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

“…Use and reuse of masks and respiratorswas a common practice during past epidemics and pandemics due to shortage of products (29)(30)(31)(32). According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extended use refers to "the practice of wearing the same N95 respirator for repeated close contact encounters with several patients, without removing the respirator between patient encounters" (33).…”