RKI and Nigerian counterpart present novel training approach for infection prevention and control

In December 2023, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) hosted the inaugural conference of PALS in Nigeria’s capital Abuja. PALS stands for “Participatory Approach to Learning in Systems” which is a training and practice approach for sustainable improvement in infection prevention and control (IPC). 180 IPC practitioners from health facilities, university teaching hospitals, governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations convened to deliberate on “Catalyzing the Power of People for Sustainable IPC Improvement in Health Facilities”.

Participants are dancing at the opening session of the conference in Nigeria in December 2023. Photo: RKI

The PALS approach is the result of the collaboration between NCDC and RKI in the “NiCaDe IPC” project. Since 2017 an international interdisciplinary team worked to develop the approach and pilot its application in Nigerian health facilities. The innovative approach adds a social and organisational lens to IPC improvement and recognises the complexity of the healthcare system. Read more about PALS on the project’s web site.

^{Video impressions from the PALS conference (video will be displayed on the Youtube channel of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention). Photo: NCDC}

At the conference, training participants presented their experiences and lessons learned from applying PALS and how it contributed to IPC improvement in their health facilities. Medical directors and PALS trainers shared perspectives on how PALS could be leveraged in fields beyond IPC and for participatory leadership. Participants discussed how to ensure sustainability of IPC improvement efforts and the best way to integrate PALS into the Nigerian national IPC programme (“Turn Nigeria Orange”). In this regard, PALS becomes one more tool that helps preventing harm to patients and health care workers and contributes building a resilient health system that provides quality routine care robust enough to withstand outbreaks. The NiCaDe IPC project website displays more impressions of the conference. NiCaDe IPC is a project of the Global Health Protection Programme (GHPP), with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) in accordance with a resolution passed by the German Bundestag.

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