Knowledge and Practices on Biosafety in Clinical Laboratories of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Biosafety, as a set of measures to prevent laboratory acquired infections, has been recommended for more than fifty years. Indeed, since that time, evidence of contamination of laboratory workers has been provided in several articles. Are these measures known and applied in laboratories in Kinshasa, this was the question to what this study tried to answer. A cross-sectional study was carried out in Kinshasa city laboratories having both qualitative and quantitative components. A visit and observation of the application of these measures was also conducted. The World Health Organization (WHO) standard form was used for this survey with some modifications. An interview was performed on Data were processed using Atlas Ti and Epi Info 2000 software.

A total of 24 laboratories were surveyed and 55 interviews were conducted. The knowledge on biosafety is good, especially among young people coming from school. The majority of the laboratories surveyed apply the measurement of appropriate clothing. On the other hand, simple measures are not applied at all, such as oral pipetting (91% of the laboratories do not prohibit it) or eating or drinking in the laboratory (more than 58%) or food in refrigerators (45% of the laboratories).

Only five safety measures are applied in all of the laboratories surveyed. Simple measures such as pipetting are still not applied. This was also found elsewhere in developing countries. Measures to raise awareness among both laboratory workers and their managers are necessary for better biosafety.