CDC Must Do More To Prevent Hospital-Acquired Infections

Main Category: MRSA / Drug Resistance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 17 Apr 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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CDC is the "biggest culprit" in the federal government's failure to do "enough to prevent deadly" infections contracted in hospitals, Betsy McCaughey, chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece. According to McCaughey, several "new reports about hospital infections show that the danger is increasing rapidly" and CDC "isn't leveling with the public about it." CDC has said that an estimated 1.7 million U.S. residents contract infections in hospitals annually, but that estimate is an "irresponsible guesstimate based on a sliver of six-year-old" data, McCaughey writes.

McCaughey adds, "Because the CDC ... has failed to recommend that all hospitals screen patients" for bacterial infections, hospitals have an "excuse to do too little." Hospitals should screen patients at the time of admission because those who are infected "unknowingly carry ... bacteria on their body [and] shed it in particles on wheel chairs, blood pressure cuffs and virtually every surface," according to McCaughey. She writes, "It is common for government regulators to become soft on the industry they are supposed to regulate," adding that CDC officials "spend too much time listening to hospital executives and not enough time with grieving families" (McCaughey, Washington Times, 4/15).

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