CDC awards US$10m to help reduce HAIs
HAIs affect around 1 in 20 hospital patients, says US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded US$10m to five academic medical centres as part of its Prevention Epicenter grant programme, which supports efforts to develop strategies to reduce hospital acquired infections.
The recipients include Duke University; Cook County Health & Hospital System and Rush University Medical Center; Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; University of Pennsylvania; and Washington University.
Some of the innovative strategies to be tested include:
- combining bleach and ultraviolet light to clean hospital rooms
- new tests that help distinguish patients who need antibiotics from those who don't
- methods that can help doctors anticipate when medical devices can cause an infection, and
- using living micro-organisms to combat harmful bacteria.
CDC says new strategies to detect and prevent HAIs have become more critical as approximately 1 in 20 hospitalised patients in the US will acquire an infection during their medical treatment.
“The Prevention Epicenter programme discovers solutions and refines them so they can work to prevent infections for all healthcare settings,” said John Jernigan, director of CDC's Office of HAI Prevention Research and Evaluation.
“During the past decade, some of our biggest breakthroughs in healthcare infection prevention have been rooted in research of the Prevention Epicenter programme, and we look forward to future advances.”
The Prevention Epicenter programme began in 1997 to promote new ways to address healthcare problems such as HAIs and antibiotic resistance. CDC names new Prevention Epicenters every five years based on peer-reviewed grant applications.