HCAI affecting healthcare quality, patient safety in hospital

PUTRAJAYA, April 29 (Bernama) -- The Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAI) is one of the biggest threats affecting the quality of healthcare and patient safety in hospitals in the country, said Deputy Health Minister Dr Lee Boon Chye.

At the opening of the National Infection Prevention Control Conference and World Hand Hygiene Day here today, Lee said HCAI was related to the antibiotic resistance which caused it to be difficult to cure or treatment becomes less effective.

“As a result, we are left to deal with prolonged hospitalisation, long-term disability, preventable deaths and increased antimicrobial resistance,” he said.

Based on the national data in 2018, Lee said the prevalence of health-related infections while living in a hospital is 4.5 per cent of 100 admissions, where Pneumonia, Blood Transfusion (BSI) and Surgical Site Infection (SSI) were the top three diagnoses during the survey.

Based on how the organism was spread, he believed prevention was one of the best ways to control the spread of the microorganism.

The most cost-effective way to prevent HCAI was the hand hygiene and the ministry also has several hand hygiene training programmes to train more of healthcare workers on the importance of hand hygiene in healthcare, he said.

The two-day event aims to increase awareness of the growing threat of HCAI and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to ensuring healthcare personnel understand their role in infection prevention and control.

-- BERNAMA