Biology Lab Reflection

Detection of infectious disease outbreaks in hospitals

 

“The World Health Organization has estimated that, globally, 8.7% of hospital patients develop hospital acquired infections”. Infections acquired in a hospital are also called nosocomial infections. “In the US alone, 2 million people developed a hospital acquired infection in the last year”. About 90,000 of these patients die as a result of their infections. Hospital-acquired infections can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites.

These microorganisms may already be present in the patient's body or may come from the environment, contaminated hospital equipment, health care workers, or other patients. About 25% of these infections can be prevented by healthcare workers taking proper precautions when caring for patients. Infections spread both by touch and through the air. Healthy people can usually fend them off, or may get only mildly sick from them, but someone with a compromised immune system or an open wound will be at risk for getting very sick .Infections that become clinically evident after 48 hours of hospitalization are considered hospital acquired. Infections that occur after the patient is discharged from the hospital can be considered healthcare associated if the organisms were acquired during the hospital stay. The infections usually develop in a surgical wound, or the urinary tract or lungs. Decreasing the number of hospital acquired infections is the number one priority for all medical personnel. If the infection is found early on, it is much easier to treat and contain.

 Along with the obvious precautions, such as hand washing and sanitizing common areas, it is important to record and document any form of infection that had be detected. Hospitals are developing new procedures and new software to help keep infections low or even nonexistent. A WHONET-SaT scan or BAC Link is a data conversion utility that standardizes data from existing microbiology systems into WHONET-SaT formats. WHONET is used by 1000 laboratories world wide.  This was originally developed for geographical disease surveillance to assess the statistical significant of community cancer cluster. The device is used to chart any infections that have occurred in the hospital by calculating the amount of infections in a specific area that have developed within days of each other. The information is then studied to detect what type of infection may be able to be spread around due to improper infection control.

“Microbiology- based cluster detection systems should use automated statistical methods to optimize cluster identification, lessen surveillance burden, and expand cluster detection to all pathogens across all hospital locations and services”. Tests run daily to record any new infections to see any significant details that may show any similarities between any infections developed within the same amount of time. This will help to prevent any spreading of infection.

Hospital acquired infections are very common and very serious. Infection can lead to death if not properly treated. It is important to follow the infection control protocols in each facility to help reduce the spreading of infection. Software may prevent the spreading of infection if studied on a daily bases.