All serious endeavors must begin with answering the question 'why?' We have a paper currently in press titled Infection Prevention in the Hospital: How Much Can We Prevent and How Hard Should We Try? The paper will be published in January 2019, Current Infectious Diseases Reports.
We estimate that 50%-70% of hospital-acquired infections are potentially preventable.
So how hard should we try and why?
In the book Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, Laurie Garrett writes that “public health is an essential trust, between government and
its people, in a pursuit of health for all…” This includes “...a healthcare system that follows the primary
maxim of medicine- do no harm.”
In my opinion, healthcare systems that fail to prioritize and relentlessly pursue
infection prevention betray the maxim of medicine, primum non nocere. This is a betrayal of the public's trust.
Our safety mandate is clear.
