The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Study puts infections acquired from hospitals at 5.6 per cent

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 13, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Study puts infections acquired from hospitals at 5.6 per cent

Special Correspondent

It is being conducted in four hospitals in Vellore, Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai

CHENNAI: A four-city study of hospital-acquired infections (HAI) in intensive care units in the country has shown that the rate is 5.6 per cent.

Four private hospitals in Vellore, Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai are part of a multi-continental study, according to Victor Rosenthal, director and co-ordinator, International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium. Dr. Rosenthal is also spearheading the research on HAI or nosocomial infections in 60 cities in 15 countries across four continents.

"We focus only on the ICU, which is home to 80 per cent of infections," says Dr. Rosenthal. The three most frequent infections — bloodstream infections, ventilator associated pneumonia and urinary tract infections — are common in India too. Since the project was launched two years ago, member hospitals have started monitoring infection levels in the ICU, undertaking basic infection control methods to reduce transmission of infections, achieving substantial results.

The hospitals — Escorts in Delhi, the Christian Medical College in Vellore, Hinduja in Mumbai and Wockhardt in Bangalore — have all volunteered to be part of the study and do not pay any fee or make extra commitments on spending, Dr. Rosenthal says. "The interventions we suggest are simple: hand washing, keeping the urinary and vascular catheters and ventilators free from infection, close infusion systems... "

Passionately devoted to ridding hospitals of infection, Dr. Rosenthal has a utopian `zero infection' dream. "No infection at all — that is not possible. What we are working at is minimising infections contracted in hospitals."

Even as he works towards collecting funds to set up a foundation that will subsidise hospitals working on infection control, this Argentinean infectious diseases specialist spends half his salary on research on nosocomial infections.

And if he has been successful, it is because he establishes with authority the dangers of neglecting such infections. "Mortality is at least two or three times higher with HAI. If mortality is 17 per cent for a patient who has not contracted a nosocomial infection, it increases to 45 per cent with ventilator associated pneumonia and 33 per cent with blood stream infections," Dr. Rosenthal says.

If this is not sufficient to convince listeners, he reels off the figures out: the cost of treating a single hospital acquired infection is $40,000 in the United States, $5000 in Argentina, $8000 in Brazil and $12,000 in Mexico. According to him, saving lives is simple and cost-effective. "All that the hospitals have to do is buy some soap and paper towels, anyway hospitals stock on gauze and sterile dressings. One person must be appointed to work two hours in the ICU every day. That is all it takes."

However, he is clear that the Government has a big role to play in controlling nosocomial infections, in making surveillance mandatory in hospitals, in drawing up national infection control guidelines and, finally, making accreditation mandatory for hospitals.

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