Arlington, Va., September 2, 2021 – “The new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing dramatic increases in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) during 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, are quite troubling and must serve as a call to action. As a nation we must take significant efforts to bolster our infection prevention and control programs throughout the healthcare continuum.
“The new report highlights the need for healthcare facilities to strengthen their infection prevention programs and support them with adequate resources so that they can handle emerging threats to public health, while at the same time ensuring that gains made in combatting HAIs are not lost.”
“The unfortunate reality is that in one year we lost nearly a decade of progress against HAIs like central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and ventilator-associated events. We now have an opportunity to use this data and take action to invest in our public health infrastructure, expand our nation’s infection prevention and control workforce, and put infection preventionists – specialists who are trained and certified to prevent infections — at the center of these efforts.
“APIC is calling on healthcare facilities to assess their infection prevention programs by looking at the care and services they provide and determining the appropriate level of personnel and resources necessary to protect patients and healthcare workers. Facility-wide infection prevention programs are critical and require adequately staffed, trained, and resourced infection prevention and control departments.
“APIC also calls on federal and state governments to provide funding to help support healthcare facilities across the continuum of care to ensure that there is adequate surge capacity so that infection prevention and control measures will endure when stressed by future pandemics and disease outbreaks.
“To reinforce the implementation of evidence-based HAI prevention measures, APIC will be offering a series of free webinars in the forthcoming weeks.”
The mission of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) is to advance the science and practice of infection prevention and control. APIC’s nearly 16,000 members develop and direct infection prevention and control programs that save lives and improve the bottom line for healthcare facilities. APIC advances its mission through patient safety, education, implementation science, competencies and certification, advocacy, and data standardization. Visit us at apic.org.
# # #
Contact: Liz Garman, egarman@apic.org, 202-365-7421; or Aaron Cohen, aaroncohenpr@gmail.com, 301-633-6773