infection control

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1 in 4 Seniors Have Superbugs on Their Hands After a Hospital Stay, New Research Finds

Press Release | University of Michigan Health System | March 14, 2016

One in four seniors is bringing along stowaways from the hospital to their next stop: superbugs on their hands. Moreover, seniors who go to a nursing home or other post-acute care facility will continue to acquire new superbugs during their stay, according to findings made by University of Michigan researchers published today in a JAMA Internal Medicine research letter. The study focused on patients who have recently been admitted to the hospital for a medical or surgical issue and temporarily need extra medical care in a PAC facility before fully returning home...

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A Deadly Superbug Appears to Be Invading America's Hospitals

Helen Branswell | The Week | January 23, 2017

A dangerous type of superbug has more tricks up its sleeves than we may be giving it credit for, a recent study suggests. The researchers found that this class of bacteria, CREs — that's short for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae — has more ways to evade antibiotics than have been currently identified, and that these bugs share their tricks readily across the families of bacteria that make up this grouping...

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After Ebola, Liberia’s Health System on Path to Recovery

World Bank | Relief Web | June 7, 2017

Shirley Kamara, 37, an expectant mother, smiled as she received medical care at C.H. Rennie Hospital in Kakata, just over 40 miles (68 km) north of Monrovia. “Our hospital is far better now since the Ebola outbreak,” she said. “We are encouraging our people to come here because everything is getting better.” C.H. Rennie Hospital in Liberia’s Margibi County was one of the facilities hardest-hit during the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014; 14 of its health workers died...

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Health System Turns To RFID To Slash Infection Rates

Dan Bowman | FierceHealth IT | January 13, 2014

Infection control via improved hand-washing efforts is the impetus for a recently announced pilot project involving big data and wireless sensors at Columbus, Ohio-based OhioHealth. Read More »

New Report Finds Nation's Public Health Emergencies Are Increasing While State Emergency Preparedness Levels face Challenges

Press Release | Trust for America’s Health | February 12, 2019

The report takes an annual snapshot of states' public health and emergency readiness. Authored by TFAH since 2003, it...highlights pressing needs for additional action particularly as weather- related and other public health emergencies become more frequent...It identifies specific action-steps that if taken would improve the jurisdiction's overall level of emergency preparedness, including dedicated funding for health security initiatives, modernizing and supporting technologies and innovations within public health programs, and building multisectoral collaboration and leadership.

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No One Knows How Many Patients Are Dying from Superbug Infections in California Hospitals

Melody Petersen | LA Times | October 2, 2016

Many thousands of Californians are dying every year from infections they caught while in hospitals. But you’d never know that from their death certificates. Sharley McMullen of Manhattan Beach came down with a fever just hours after being wheeled out of a Torrance Memorial Medical Center operating room on May 4, 2014. A missionary’s daughter who worked as a secretary at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the height of the space race, McMullen, 72, was there for treatment of a bleeding stomach ulcer. Soon, though, she was fighting for her life...

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Nurses' Scrubs Often Contaminated with Bad Bugs

Press Release | Infectious Diseases Society of America | October 27, 2016

Bad bugs readily spread from patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) to nurses' scrubs and the room, according to research being presented at IDWeek 2016™. The sleeves and pockets of the scrubs and the bed railing were the most likely to be contaminated. The study tracked the transmission of bacteria known to be particularly troublesome in hospitals, including those such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to many antibiotics...

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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance

Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker | Wired | March 18, 2017

Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...

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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance

Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker | Wired | March 18, 2017

Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...

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Slow Ebola Response Blamed On False Assumptions About Its Course

Steven Ross Johnson | Modern Healthcare | September 17, 2014

Health experts and humanitarian organizations waging war against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa hope plans announced Tuesday by the Obama Administration to send additional aid to affected regions will encourage more philanthropic support and health worker recruitment. Both money and volunteers have come in at a slower pace in this crisis than in past disasters...

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Tracking Deadly Superbug Infections Across Europe with Web-Based Open Tools that Use Genome Sequencing and Open APIs

Press Release | Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute | May 5, 2016

For the first time, scientists have shown that MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ infections can be tracked across Europe by combining whole-genome sequencing with a web-based system. In mBio today (5 May 2016) researchers at Imperial College London and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute worked with a European network representing doctors in 450 hospitals in 25 countries to successfully interpret and visualise the spread of drug-resistant MRSA...

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