Hospital Acquired Infection Surveillance - June 2025

Thank you to those who were able to join us for the June IPC Journal Club this week.  A big thankyou also to Dr Susan Jain for her presentation on the Surveillance of Hospital Acquired Infections in our health services and Lindy in helping us think through how we integrate this into our IPC work. 

To help you with Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) surveillance in your health services, here are some helpful resources:

• Attached to this post is Dr Susan's presentation slides.
• The WHO Practical Handbook about Surveillance of health care-associated infections at national and facility levels that Dr Susan referred to can be found at this link and is also attached to this email https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240101456
• The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care has resources about HAI surveillance found here  https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/our-work/healthcare-associated-infection-program/hai-surveillance
• Prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The ‘Bundle Approach’.  This journal article talks about going back to the very basics of hospital infection control and implementing bundles of prevention strategies for HAI's. These can be cost-effective and easily adaptable, to cater to the increasing HCAIs and MDR infections. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0255085720304795

HAI and Surveillance teaching resources:

• Nosocomial Infection (HAI) teaching resource https://www.osmosis.org/answers/nosocomial-infection. 
• Surveillance of Healthcare-Associated Infections. This is a basic overview with links to certain topics. https://www.ausmed.com.au/learn/articles/hai-surveillance
• Surveillance for Healthcare Infections.  This chapter has a link to a teaching slides on page 8. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.theific.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Surv.pdf

And some recent Western Pacific IPC reports to give some overview information about some of your countries:

•  Infection prevention and control systems in six priority countries in the Western Pacific Region: regional report 2023.  This report highlights progress and areas for improvement in infection prevention and control (IPC) implementation across the Western Pacific Region: Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Viet Nam. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789290620686#:~:text=Overview,a%20core%20health%20system%20priority.
• Here's a journal article about a Baseline evaluation of the World Health Organization (WHO) infection prevention and control (IPC) core components in Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11437787/