Infection Control News and Research

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Hospital managers could face criminal charges if patients catch superbugs

Ms Hewitt has promised a "much stronger" legal framework in the National Health Service (NHS) to help hospitals reduce the rate of antibiotic-resistant MRSA and other hospital acquired infections.

17 May 2005

UK plan for influenza pandemic

The HPA Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan outlines the Health Protection Agency’s plan for responding to an influenza pandemic. It replaces the Public Health Laboratory Service Pandemic Influenza Plan of July 2001.

23 Apr 2005

Marburg outbreak - experts struggling to get message across

Disease experts in Angola say it will be weeks before it is determined whether the on-going Marburg crisis can be averted in Angola where the disease has already killed at least 194 people.

12 Apr 2005

Study finds direct link between use of alcohol hand gel and reduction in hospital infections

Hospitals whose healthcare workers had access to alcohol gel to disinfect hands had a decreased risk of hospital- associated infections in their patients compared to hospitals whose staff did not have a regular alcohol hand gel program, according to a new study from Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle and published in the April 1 edition of Pediatrics.

4 Apr 2005

Political point-scoring over policies to control MRSA confuses real issue

Political point-scoring over policies to control MRSA (meticillin-resistant Staphlococcus aureus) confuses cleanliness with the real failure in UK hospitals - poor hand hygiene and inadequate use of gloves, states an editorial in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

3 Apr 2005

CDC experts sent to Angola to help with Marburg epidemic

In an effort to control the Marburg virus outbreak in Angola, Health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will assist the World Health Organization by going to Angola to help with outbreak investigation, infection control and laboratory diagnosis of the disease.

30 Mar 2005

Marburg death toll in Angola now up to 122

Carlos Alberto, a spokesman for the Angolan health ministry, says the death toll in the Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola has now risen to 122, just one fewer than in the largest previous outbreak of the disease, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 200 and killed 123 of 149 people infected.

28 Mar 2005

Neonatal infections in hospital born babies are up to 20 times higher in developing countries

Neonatal deaths account for over one-third of the global burden of child mortality. Infections are the major cause of neonatal deaths in developing countries. (See The Lancet Neonatal Survival Series, March 2005) Data suggest that unhygienic practices in labour and delivery, and in after-birth care, put babies in the developing world at great risk of infections and death soon after birth.

28 Mar 2005

Evidence SARS virus may spread through the air

Two new studies present evidence that the virus causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may spread through the air, not just through direct contact with contaminated water droplets as previous research had shown.

23 Mar 2005

Washing hands with soap and water best protection against disease-causing viruses

The largest, most comprehensive study ever done comparing the effectiveness of hand hygiene products shows that nothing works better in getting rid of disease-causing viruses than simply washing one's hands with good old-fashioned soap and water.

14 Mar 2005

ALDA Pharmaceuticals begins patent applications

ALDA Pharmaceuticals has filed national patent applications in the United States, Canada and Singapore for the formulation and production of Viralex.

8 Mar 2005

MRSA league figures misleading

The Queen Victoria hospital NHS trust a specialist hospital topped the league table for rates of MRSA infection but attacked the figures as "misleading" claiming they "grossly misrepresent" the hospital's infection control record.

7 Mar 2005

Britain's MRSA cases lowest ever recorded

Britain's Health Secretary, John Reid welcomed the latest mandatory surveillance figures released today showing MRSA infection rates at their lowest since recording began.

7 Mar 2005

Ebola virus outbreaks linked to infected wild animal carcasses

All recent Ebola virus outbreaks in humans in forests between Gabon and the Republic of Congo were the result of handling infected wild animal carcasses, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its regional partners

14 Feb 2005

Isolating intensive-care patients infected with MRSA does not reduce cross-infection

Results of a UK study published online suggest that the widely practised approach of isolating intensive-care patients infected with MRSA does not reduce cross-infection. Authors of the study caution that this finding should not be extended to general hospital wards, and needs further confirmation from larger studies.

7 Jan 2005

Simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of catheter-related bloodstream infections

As many as 28,000 patients die each year in the U.S. because of catheter-related bloodstream infections, but doctors and nurses who implement simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of deaths to nearly zero, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

30 Nov 2004