Infection Control Today Magazine - healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs), hospital infections, infection prevention and control, healthcare epidemiology, aseptic technique, environmental hygiene, hand hygiene, disinfection and sterilization, outbreak investigation, surveillance

FEATURES

Dialysis Organizations Team Up With CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is teaming up with a broad coalition of kidney and dialysis organizations to reduce the number ...read more

Limitations of Standard Precautions

The Standard Precautions concept in healthcare dictates that healthcare workers assess risk in advance of a patient interaction and use appropriate ...read more

Protect Yourself From Zika

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers suggestions on ways to protect yourself from Zika virus transmission. ...read more

Making the Business Case for Technology

Infection preventionists, environmental services directors, purchasing managers and members of the hospital C-suite are finding themselves at the ...read more

Medical Device Reprocessing

This symposium will address key issues such as the dangers associated with improperly processed devices; the real-world situations that impede proper ...read more

Latest Headlines

New Biological Route for Swine Flu to Human Infections

Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered a new biological pathway by which the H1N1 flu virus can make the jump from swine to humans. Early tests indicate this pathway may have played an important role in transmitting the virus into humans. A new biological pathway by which ...More
December 10, 2009 Posted in News
Study Reveals H1N1 Unexpected Weakness

The H1N1 influenza virus has been keeping a secret that may be the key to defeating it and other flu viruses as well. Researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have found what they believe is a weakness in H1N1's method for evading detection by the ...More
December 10, 2009 Posted in News
HIV Screening Tests Now Covered by Medicare

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its final decision to cover Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection screening for Medicare beneficiaries who are at increased risk for the infection, including women who are pregnant and Medicare ...More
December 9, 2009 Posted in News
Cigarettes: Chock Full of Microbes

A study conducted by the University of Maryland School of Public Health was published last week in the December issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The goal of the study was to search for microbes in four common brands of American cigarettes. ...More
December 9, 2009 Posted in Blogs
Fast, Accurate Urine Test for Pneumonia Possible, Study Finds

Pneumonia is a lung infection that annually sickens millions of people in the United States, resulting in approximately 500,000 hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. A rapid, accurate diagnostic test for pneumonia could save lives by enabling doctors to begin ...More
December 9, 2009 Posted in News
Implications of Flu Pandemics on Blood Supplies

A German research team has examined data on supply and demand for blood transfusions against a computer simulation of an influenza pandemic, and discovered that a severe pandemic scenario could quickly lead to a deficit of up to 96,000 red blood cell (RBC) transfusion units ...More
December 9, 2009 Posted in News
Adults Receiving Flu Vaccine at About the Same Rate as in 2008

American adults are not being vaccinated against the seasonal flu any more often than they were last year, despite increased public discussion of the importance of influenza vaccines resulting from the worldwide outbreak of the H1N1 virus, according to a new RAND ...More
December 9, 2009 Posted in News
H1N1 Flu Adopted Novel Strategy to Move from Birds to Humans

The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus used a new strategy to cross from birds into humans, a warning that it has more than one trick up its sleeve to jump the species barrier and become virulent.In a report in this week's early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the ...More
December 8, 2009 Posted in News
Fatty Food Can Weaken the Immune System

Fresh evidence that fatty food is bad for our health has come to light: mice fed a lard-based diet over a long period got worse at fighting bacteria in the blood, reveals a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy.The mice fed the lard-based diet derived 60 per cent of their ...More
December 8, 2009 Posted in News
New Research Shows Patients Have Role in Promoting Hand Hygiene Among Clinicians

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) and the Premier healthcare alliance today released research showing that a video can be an effective tool for encouraging patients to remind healthcare staff to wash their hands. The ...More
December 8, 2009 Posted in News, Hand Hygiene