Return to PJ Online Home Page
The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 264 No 7086 p362
March 4, 2000 Clinical

This page should have been published last week as Vol 264 No 7085

Hospital-acquired infections could be cut by 15 per cent, says NAO

At any one time, around one in 11 hospital patients has a hospital-acquired infection (HAI), which costs the NHS £1,000m each year in England. This could be reduced by 15 per cent across the NHS, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report published last week.
The report provides an analysis of current practice in HAI management and also gives recommendations for improved infection control. It concludes that the NHS "generally could do more to improve its strategic management" of infection, commenting that a fifth of NHS trusts did not have an infection control programme.

handwashing
Eight per cent of NHS trusts do not have a policy on handwashing, one of the most effective preventive measures against HAIs, the report says

The report says that, while not all HAIs are preventable, infection control teams believe that a reduction of 15 per cent is achievable. Based on figures from a recent Public Health Laboratory Service report on HAIs (PJ, February 5, p206) this suggests a potential saving of £150m a year, it concludes. Patients with suppressed immune systems, the old and young and those undergoing invasive procedures are most susceptible to HAIs. The most common ways by which HAIs occur are through blood infections, urinary infections, chest infections, skin infections and following surgery.
The report makes a number of recommendations, including specific measures for the Department of Health and NHS trusts. These include methods to improve surveillance, which needs to be done "more effectively", and the possible implementation of post-discharge surveillance, which may be of use for surgical wound infections. The report notes that there are gaps in education and training of health care staff and that written infection control policies should be made more widely available and accessible by NHS trusts.
The management and control of hospital acquired infection in acute NHS trusts in England - the full report and a summary are available on the National Audit Office website (www.nao.gov.uk).