One way to combat hospital-acquired infections is to understand more about their root causes, according to an article on the DNA India website.
Facts and figures about HAIs (in the USA) include:
• HAIs claim an average of 271 lives every day. HAIs kill more people in the United States than automobile accidents and breast cancer combined.
• The United States experiences about two million HAI cases per year
• HAIs cost an average of $25,000 per patient. Consider there are approximately two million HAI cases per year, their total burden is in the neighborhood of $50 billion.
• The majority of HAIs are transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces/equipment, or via airborne transmission
• More than 70 per cent of the bacteria that cause HAIs are resistant to one or more of the front-line medications used to treat them
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