Monday, April 18, 2011

Hospital acquired infections - NY Times raising level of attention w/ editorial

Just a quick one here.  The New York Times had an editorial Sunday on hospital acquired infections: Hospitals Shouldn't Make You Sicker.  I couldn't agree more.  The Times discussed some recent studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine as well as plans by the Obama Administration to fund some work in this area.  It would be good I note if some of the funding focused not on infections per se but on the microbial ecology of hospitals, which we know very little about.  Focusing just on hand washing and transmission of nasty pathogens is not enough. 

1 comment:

  1. Those are impressive figures - "reduced the spread of one of the most deadly bacterial infections, known as MRSA, by 62 percent in intensive care units and 45 percent in other hospital units."

    Now if those sort of results could be translated to other hospitals (and there is no reason why they couldn't) it would make an enormous difference.

    I always feel it is a reflection of our society in that the place you go to heal is the place most likely to make you sick!

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