Antibiotic resistance is a threat to public health. It compromises the treatment of infected patients, in particular that of the most severely ill patients. Increasingly, intensive care physicians in Europe are confronted with infections caused by bacteria for which limited or no adequate treatment options are available.
Today, the World Health Organization publishes its Global Guidelines for the Prevention of Surgical Site Infections, which include a list of recommendations prepared by top leading experts and based on a review of the latest evidence in the area.
On 21 May, Public Health England (PHE) reported that a retrospective investigation identified 13 patients with endocarditis, surgical site infection or disseminated infection with Mycobacterium chimaera or other Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) species within four years of surgery involving cardiopulmorary bypass.
Today, ECDC’s Healthcare-associated Infections Surveillance Network (HAI-Net) publishes two updated protocols for the surveillance of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs): one for surgical site infections (SSIs) and prevention indicators, and another one for HAIs and prevention indicators in intensive care units (ICUs), both to be used by European hospitals. An update of the protocol for the surveillance of Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) was published on 21 April.
ECDC point prevalence surveys (PPSs) estimate that each year 3.5 million healthcare-associated infections occur in acute care hospitals, and 4.2 million in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) across Europe.
An EU-wide survey estimated that 4.2 million healthcare-associated infections occur every year in European long-term care facilities, compared to an estimated 3.5 million occurring in European acute care hospitals, and that on any given day, over 116 400 residents have at least one active healthcare-associated infection. Pete Kinross, an expert in surveillance of healthcare-associated infections at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), speaks about these findings during a session on antimicrobial resistance in these healthcare settings, at ECCMID 2017.
The findings in the latest report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria from ECDC and EFSA underline the serious threat AMR poses to public and animal health. Infections caused by bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobials lead to about 25 000 deaths in the EU every year.
The global rise of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) is alarming and is an increasing threat to patient safety, in Europe and globally.
Chlamydia infection, campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, gonorrhoea and tuberculosis were the most commonly reported notifiable infectious diseases in the EU and EEA in 2014.
A study published today by PLOS Medicine, estimates the combined burden of six healthcare-associated infections as being higher than that of diseases such as influenza, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis together.