Infection associated with health care has a direct effect over mortality, morbidity and quality of life in people. The infections also impose a large economic burden over health care institutions across the nations.
However, several consequences that are imposed by poor control of infection can be overcome by strategies that can perform effective prevention of infection. Improvement in prevention of infection control should be done at national level with uniform standards in order to prevent infection from becoming a health hazard among large group of populations. (Allegranzi et al., 2011)
The containment of infections also has a positive impact over the problem of antibiotic resistance that microorganisms are developing due to overuse of antibiotics. Infection prevention and control has a broader relevance as it helps in safeguarding the interest of general population as well as health care service providers.
In one of the study reports released by World Health Organization in 2011, it was found that nearly 7% of patients in developed nations and nearly 15% of patients in low, middle income countries suffer from at least one of the health problems that are given by the infections. Many countries have not regarded it as a significant subject and several steps are to be suggested for prevention and control. (Storr et al., 2017)
The approach for prevention and control of infection has been done at several levels like programme development, guidelines, education, training, multi-mode strategies. According to the recommendation the prevention strategy should incorporate establishment of an acute health care facility at several health care centres in order to control health hazard through good practices.
Evidences have shown that well trained professionals working at acute health care facilities help in effective control of the infection. Recommendation has also been made for publishing a uniform good practice statement that defines objective, activities and impact of practices.
The statement should be strictly followed across the nation for prevention and control of infection. One of the most common infections that easily spread in patients is catheter associated infection in bloodstream.
Such infection can be regulated by following good practices among health care centres. (Wernli et al., 2011) Technical guidelines are important as they provide consistency in the prevention and control and they also provide a framework in which good practices can be done.
However, these guidelines are not followed completely across the countries. Special training should be provided to health care professionals in order to reduce the health risks that increase due to poor control of infection.
The education and training regarding infection control should not be limited to certain health care professionals, and it should be given to all professionals who have clinical or non-clinical roles.
The evidences have shown that training of health care professionals who have direct clinical roles has reduced the chances of infection and this has also shown increase in compliance of hand hygiene.
As discussed earlier, framing strategies statement and good practices record is not sufficient for effective control of infection, but it is also important that they should be followed at all levels by the professionals uniformly.
Training and education provide the opportunity to the health care professionals to understand these statements and makes them aware of procedures through which they can easily incorporate the guidelines. Another critical aspect of the prevention of infection is surveillance as it helps in evaluation of the programme.
Due to poor regulation of infection, different health hazards have been developing continuously and they impose threats in different pattern. The surveillance not only helps in detection of new health problems that arise due to infection, but it also helps in checking the current status of the guidelines and strategies that have been released to the health care organizations for prevention and control.
The surveillance also helps in identification of factors that are limiting the function of several health care institutes in contributing for infection control. These factors are poor capacity of laboratories, lack of infrastructure, poorly trained health care staff. Multi-mode strategies have been suggested and they comprise of several elements that are integrated such that they develop a team to work together.
There are five basic components of the strategy development. First is change of system for facilitation of best practices. Second is training and education of professionals who work both at clinical and non-clinical levels.
Third is monitoring of practices, performing surveillance and compliance for regulation and submission of feedback of strategy. Fourth is improvement of communication in order to make the best use of strategies and bring out desired results from them.
Fifth is bringing cultural changes to foster a safe climate. It has been found in evidences that multi-mode strategies have significantly reduced the occurrence of health risks that arise due to infection. Ventilator associated pneumonia that has been associated to Clostridium species have seen a greater decline due to implementation of effective strategies. (Rodriguez et al., 2015)
It can be concluded that through selective panels and several trials infection control can be done. The focus should be made on acute health care as health care organizations are home to several different infections that mainly arise due to lack of good practices among health care professionals.
It also should be kept in subject that legal cover should be provided to the guidelines and good practice statement so that it is practiced without carelessness. Improvement of infrastructure should be done in order to set up the acute care centres that aid health care professionals to practice the framework and guidelines set by the authorities.
Allegranzi, B., Nejad, S., Combescure, C., Graafmans, W., Attar, H., Donaldson, L., & Pittet, D. (2011). Burden of endemic health-care-associated infection in developing countries: systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet, 377(9761), 228-241. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(10)61458-4
Rodriguez, V., Giuffre, C., Villa, S., Almada, G., Prasopa-Plaizier, N., & Gogna, M. et al. (2015). A multimodal intervention to improve hand hygiene in ICUs in Buenos Aires, Argentina: a stepped wedge trial. International Journal For Quality In Health Care, 27(5), 405-411. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/mzv065
Storr, J., Twyman, A., Zingg, W., Damani, N., Kilpatrick, C., & Reilly, J. et al. (2017). Core components for effective infection prevention and control programmes: new WHO evidence-based recommendations. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control, 6(1). doi: 10.1186/s13756-016-0149-9
Wernli, D., Haustein, T., Conly, J., Carmeli, Y., Kickbusch, I., & Harbarth, S. (2011). A Call for Action: The Application of the International Health Regulations to the Global Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance. Plos Medicine, 8(4), e1001022. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001022
