Hospital Infection Control & Prevention – July 1, 2013
July 1, 2013
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APIC Conference: Infection prevention in an era of emerging pandemics
What if HIV had been detected in the small human populations where it first appeared, African bushmeat hunters who were likely infected with the novel retrovirus decades before it struck the United States and spread globally in the 1980s? How many of the 25 million people who have died of AIDS would have remained uninfected because the virus had been identified by scientists in the field? -
The fire next time: Hard work, luck may prevent pandemic
Despite all the accolades and academic honors, Nathan Wolfe, PhD, is disarmingly down to a very different Earth one teeming with microbes that are ever interacting with animals and man. -
Measles outbreaks continue as retracted study echoes
Infection preventionists must raise a common voice in support of the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine to overcome the misplaced fears and false information that have led to recurrent outbreaks in unvaccinated populations, an IP urged recently in Fort Lauderdale, FL at the 40th annual meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). -
Blood money: Hospitals reap profit on CLABSIs
While the exorbitant costs of health care associated infections (HAIs) have been repeatedly cited as a prime reason for prevention second only to the higher calling of patient safety an inconvenient truth was recently revealed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Looking at central line related bloodstream infections which kill some 28,000 patients annually they found a disturbing disincentive to prevent CLABSIs at the very heart of the health care system profit. -
Toolkit guides patient follow-up after breaches
It is an unfortunate sign of the times that recurrent injection safety lapses and hepatitis outbreaks have reached the point where public health officials felt it necessary to create a toolkit to guide notification and follow-up of patients potentially exposed to bloodborne pathogens.