Causes and Effects of Occupational Risk for Healthcare Workers on the Maternity Ward of a Tanzanian Hospital

In the Rukwa region of Tanzania, healthcare providers often work in very low-resource environments that lack equipment and the tools needed for patient care. Additionally, resources for protecting the healthcare workers from occupational exposure to infectious diseases is also often lacking. Against the background of the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and continued resource scarcity in the Mawingu Regional Hospital, healthcare workers explained the effects of a lack of certainty about women's HIV status and a lack of personal protective equipment. On the maternity ward, the nurse-midwives worked in an environment that was high risk but also nearly entirely outside their control. When health administrators at the institutional level did not demonstrate care for their employees-what I term institutional care-the nurses reported higher levels of concern and fatalism regarding their potential to contract HIV or Hepatitis. This article introduces the concept of "institutional care" as a key component of mitigating healthcare workers' occupational risk from their exposure to bodily fluids. The article concludes with recommendations for how to operationalize institutional care to mitigate occupational risk in this environment to care for hospital staff members so they can most effectively care for patients and minimize abusive interactions.