July Meeting to Feature Update on HAI Prevention Activities
Advisory committee members will hear an update on CDC's activities for prevention and control of health care-associated infections (HAIs), updates on hospital antimicrobial stewardship activities, and an update on a Draft Guideline to Prevent Surgical Site Infections.
CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, known as HICPAC, will meet July 16-17 in Atlanta to hear an update on CDC's activities for prevention and control of health care-associated infections (HAIs), updates on hospital antimicrobial stewardship activities, and an update on a Draft Guideline to Prevent Surgical Site Infections. The agenda also includes infection control practice improvements and environmental infection control, according to the meeting announcement.
The meeting will be open to the public. It is taking place at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Global Communications Center, Building 19, Auditorium B, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on July 16 and from 9 a.m. to noon on July 17. Visit this website to register to attend the meeting.
HICPAC provides guidance to the director of CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, the director of its National Center for Emerging and
Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; the CDC director, and the secretary of Health and Human Services on health care infection prevention and control; and strategies for surveillance, prevention, and control of infections, antimicrobial resistance, and related events in settings where health care is provided.
CDC's health care-associated infection prevalence survey estimate of the overall problem of HAIs in U.S. hospitals and is based on a large sample of U.S. acute care hospitals; the survey found that about one in 25 hospital patients has at least one health care-associated infection, and that there were an estimated 721,800 HAIs in U.S acute care hospitals in 2011, with about 75,000 hospital patients with HAIs having died during their hospitalizations. The estimated number included these estimates as the major site of infection:
- Pneumonia: 157,500
- Gastrointestinal illness: 123,100
- Urinary tract infections: 93,300
- Primary bloodstream infections: 71,900
- Surgical site infections from any inpatient surgery: 157,500
- Other types of infections: 118,500