Question

(200-300 words)

1. Explain how to establish a system for healthcare-associated infection surveillance?

Answer 1

Establishment of a system for healthcare-associated infections surveillance

The healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are very less known in the public health care sectors. This is due to lack of proper surveillance system.

Healthcare acquired infections are sometimes mortal and can cause several life threating diseases which are mainly associated with prolonged duration of stay in hospital. HAIs have become now a major public health importance globally. This can happen in the sectors and departments of health care sectors. As per World Health Organisation (WHO) report about 3 to 12% hospitalized patients are suffering from the HAIs in developing counties. The surveillance systems are most effective a method for the identification of HAIs.

- The important methods are tracking trends, providing quality outcome indicators and identifying actions to reduce the burden of HAI.

- To identify of common source outbreaks

- To assess and fix the human resource capacity of the hospitals

- To generate data most effected prone areas and inform to clinician and hospital management

- Development of data collection tool

- Situation analysis in the hospitals

- Training to the hospitals employees about the healthcare-associated infections. Specials training sessions should be conducted with the infection control practitioners and hospitals stoff such as pharmacists and nursing staff in the each department.

- Collection of all the data in excel sheets and review of the collected data with the clinicians. The incidence of HAIs should be properly monitored and recorded by infection control practitioner at each department individual.

- These information should be collected for 2-3 month after implementation of surveillance system. After that a review meeting should be conducted to take decision on whether the surveillance system should be adopted or some modifications are required.