RESEARCH ARTICLE


Prevention and Control of Hospital-Related Infections in Low and Middle Income Countries



Lul Raka*
Faculty of Medicine, University of Prishtina National Institute of Public Health of Kosova, Prishtina, Kosova

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2010
Volume: 4
First Page: 125
Last Page: 131
Publisher Id: TOIDJ-4-125
DOI: 10.2174/1874279301004010125

Article History:

Received Date: 28/2/2010
Revision Received Date: 18/4/2010
Acceptance Date: 6/5/2010
Electronic publication date: 15/9/2010
Collection year: 2010

© 2010 Raka et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Correspondence: Address correspondence to this author at the Rrethi i spitalit, p.n., 10000 Prishtina, Kosova; Tel: +37744368289; Fax: +38138 550 585; E-mail: lulraka@hotmail.com


Abstract

Hospitals are the main health facilities for the risk of acquiring an infection during the delivery of care. Hospital-related infections constitute an important health challenge worldwide. In low and middle income countries infection prevention and control policies are either non-existent, poorly adapted or insufficiently funded by governments. Lack of financial funds, inadequate infrastructure and management, improper use of antimicrobials and shortage of trained staff are key constraints for effective infection control in the hospitals of low income countries. As a consequence, these countries are facing the challenges of higher rates of hospital infections, frequent outbreaks, unsafe care and spread of infections in the community. The best solutions for an effective infection control program entail introduction of prevention bundles, greater governmental commitment, improvement of compliance with hand hygiene, surveillance, prudent use of antimicrobials, translation of research results into practice and upgrading the capabilities of microbiology laboratory. Focusing on infection control, countries with limited resources can improve the quality of healthcare in the future.

Keywords: Hospital-related infections, low and middle income countries, prevention.