Risk of hospital-borne infection at 70% government health centres

LUCKNOW: There is high risk of acquiring hospital-associated infection in over 70% of government health facilities in UP. The fact came to fore in an assessment of health facilities by experts at Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences.

"A heuristic assessment of more than 20 facilities in the state including medical colleges, district hospitals, community and primary health centers showed that 70-75% of facilities did not follow the standard protocol to limit hospital-borne infections," said Dr Rajesh Harshvardhan, faculty in SGPGI's hospital administration department in the backdrop of a national workshop on hospital infection prevention and control practices and antimicrobial stewardship programme.

He added that assessment was against criteria which included admission to and visitors' policy for the intensive care unit and hospital hand hygiene maintenance policy and equipment usage.

"Majority of the centres lacked on primary protocol of hand hygiene. This is crucial considering that this technique alone has the power to reduce overall hospital infection rate to one-third," he said. Listing the top reasons for high rate of infection, he said: "Shortage of staff and infrastructure and high burden of patients prevent doctors from following the protocols."

SGPGI had organised the workshop to train doctors and tell them that the protocol was in their best interest.

President of UP Provincial Medical and Health Services Association Dr Ashok Yadav said: "A physician at RML, Balrampur or Civil hospitals, on an average, attends to 300 patients (old and new cases) in his six-hour shift in the out-patient department. This translates to just about 48 seconds per patient. So, where is the time to wash hands?"

At many places, the task of checking hospital infection is handled by hospital infection control committees. However, at many places, they do not exist. Health officials said there is shortage of microbiologists and pathologists in government health cadre.

"There may be just three persons in the entire cadre of 8,000-odd government doctors with specialisation in microbiology. The number of people with diplomas in clinical microbiology is about 130 but that is too less considering the requirement," Dr Yadav said.