Personal protective equipment for preventing highly infectious diseases due to contact with contaminated body fluids in health care staff

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: To summarise and critically appraise current evidence of the effectiveness of PPE for preventing nosocomial infection in health care staff exposed to body fluids contaminated with viral haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Lassa, Marburg, Congo-Crimean Haemorrhagic Fever or comparable highly infectious diseases with serious consequences such as SARS. In particular, we will try and address current questions identified from the West Africa Ebola epidemic, that includes the evaluation of the effect of: one type of PPE as part of full-body protection versus another on contamination and infection rates; one procedure in donning and doffing full body PPE versus another on contamination and infection rates; and one intervention to improve compliance with guidelines for full body PPE, including education and training, versus another on compliance, contamination and infection rates.