Prevent infection first, U.S. agency urges hospitals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hospitals need to step up efforts to prevent infections with drug-resistant "superbugs," which are becoming more and more of a threat to patients, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

Every year, infections caught in U.S. hospitals kill 90,000 people and cost $4.5 billion, the CDC said. Facilities need to keep track of such infections and put into place regular programs to fight them, it said.

"Effective and comprehensive programs to prevent drug-resistant infections are essential to improve patient safety," said Dr. Denise Cardo, director of CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.

"Preventing these types of infections requires a constant and concerted effort on the part of health-care facilities, but it's important they make this a priority," Cardo added in a statement.

Bacteria have been steadily evolving to evade the action of antibiotics and infections are becoming more difficult to fight.

For instance, the CDC said, in 1972, only 2 percent of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria infections were drug-resistant but in 2004, 63 percent were.

In a few cases, no available antibiotics can cure an infection, and many more resist methicillin, a later-generation type of antibiotic.

The new CDC guidelines advise hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities to track infection rates, ensure that their staff use standard infection control practices and follow guidelines regarding the correct use of antibiotics.

Simple hand-washing is still a problem in some facilities, the CDC has said.

"The main mode of transmission to other patients is through human hands, especially health-care workers' hands," the CDC says in a statement on its Web site at http://www.cdc.gov.

"Prevention of drug-resistant infections requires a full complement of actions tailored to the local setting," said Dr. Patrick Brennan, chair of the CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee.

The problem is not restricted to the United States.

In Britain, 1,168 people died from methicillin-resistant Staph infections in 2004, according to the Office of National Statistics. Hospital-acquired infections killed 8,500 Canadians last year.