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High contact follow-up rates suggest progress, but who is being missed? Inside the DRC’s Ebola response, shortages, strained treatment centers, and gaps in community trust reveal a more complicated story.

Sterile processing professionals face constant interruptions, cognitive overload, increasingly complex devices, and hundreds of IFUs. Randalyn Harreld, CRCST, FHSPA, explains why health care organizations must address the human factors behind SPD performance rather than expecting frontline professionals to simply absorb ever-increasing complexity.

Long-acting HIV therapies promise greater convenience, but fewer doses alone may not solve adherence or access challenges. Lloyd Bibby and Pooja Goyal, MS(Pharm), discuss patient choice, weekly oral and injectable therapies, health system capacity, equitable access, and the real-world measures that will define success.

This week on Infection Control Today, the stories ranged from emerging drug-resistant pathogens circling the globe to a landmark decade of surface science—all against a backdrop of ongoing outbreaks and a hard look at what the profession owes its own workforce.

At AHE 2026 in New Orleans, The Beryl Institute's Stacy Palmer discussed 8 guiding principles for experience excellence and why EVS professionals influence far more than environmental cleanliness. Their interactions, workplace culture, and connection with patients help shape the overall human experience of health care.

Drug-resistant Trichophyton indotineae has now been identified in 29 countries. Its resistance to first-line terbinafine, resemblance to other dermatophytes, and expanding global transmission are creating new challenges for diagnosis, treatment, surveillance, and antifungal stewardship.

Infection Control Today celebrates 30 years of covering the people, science, and challenges shaping infection prevention with another milestone: its first digital magazine, featuring outbreak analysis, biosecurity, respiratory testing, sterile processing, professional leadership, conference coverage, and more.

During National EVS Week, appreciation matters, but partnership matters more. Environmental services professionals bring infection prevention expertise and a unique understanding of the health care environment that can help identify barriers, improve cleaning and disinfection practices, and ultimately protect patients.

Nearly 4 months into the DRC's Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak, some indicators suggest transmission may be slowing. But shifting hotspots, treatment-center capacity problems, community deaths, and incomplete surveillance data show why national case totals alone cannot determine whether containment has been achieved.

A 10-year NIH-funded study used Bayesian statistical modeling to examine the relationship between continuously active EOScu surfaces and HAI reduction. EOS Surfaces representatives discuss the findings, passive infection prevention, environmental recontamination, and why IPs should continue asking tough questions.

CBIC and APIC say updated IPU requirements are intended to protect infection prevention education from commercial influence. But differing guidance, questions about industry support, and concerns about educational access leave IPs asking for a clearer, more consistent road map.

Artificial intelligence can help IPs analyze surveillance data, identify patterns, improve training, and reduce repetitive work. Bassel Molaeb explains why AI literacy is becoming an important IPC competency while human validation, clinical context, and professional judgment remain essential.

"You can't underinvest in public health and then expect it to have a fast and swift response." Brian C. Castrucci, DrPH, discusses Cyclospora, surveillance, workforce capacity, misinformation, and rebuilding public trust. Read the Q&A and watch the full ICT interview.

A surface can look clean and still carry significant bioload. The new Bioload Exposure Metric Index (BEMI) aims to standardize ATP sampling and move surface hygiene toward a measurable cleanliness score. If we can't measure clean, how do we know we've achieved it?

Is the Ebola outbreak in the DRC getting better? The answer depends on which numbers you examine. Several important indicators are moving in the right direction, including slower case growth and a declining Rₜ. But major gaps remain in contact tracing, testing, community deaths, safe burial coverage, and treatment capacity in some of the hardest-hit areas. ICT takes a deeper look at the latest outbreak data and why the numbers suggest cautious optimism, not victory.

At AHE Exchange 2026, ICT spoke with experts representing commercial laundry services, EVS, and infection prevention about the systems behind a successful reusable linen program. They discuss linen quality, reject rates, unnecessary waste, frontline education, data, PAR levels, infection prevention oversight, and why strong relationships between health care facilities and their laundry providers matter.

How do you celebrate an infection that never happened? That's one of the unusual challenges infection preventionists share with teachers. Both can spend their careers changing outcomes they may never see. Both educate people who don't always want to listen. Both are second-guessed. Both face burnout. And both must somehow keep remembering why they started.

A needlestick injury happens in seconds. Its cause may have started hours earlier. Amy Piser argues that getting closer to “sharps injury zero” requires health care organizations to stop focusing solely on the moment of injury and start examining the systems surrounding it.

Coffee cups aren't infectious. Yet ordinary trash can end up in regulated medical waste streams, increasing both costs and environmental impact. Ashley L. Perry, MS, explains how hospitals can improve waste segregation, scrutinize green claims, and balance sustainability with infection prevention.

Bacteria have learned to evade many of our antibiotics. But what about defenses shaped by millions of years of evolution? An experimental peptide derived from the human immune protein CXCL10 targets resistant pathogens by exploiting a distinct bacterial vulnerability. The research is early, but the strategy could have implications far beyond a single drug candidate.

The US effectively eliminated measles once. Now cases are climbing again, infants remain vulnerable, people have died, and vaccine misinformation is undermining one of public health's greatest achievements. The price of forgetting what vaccines prevent can be measured in lives.

If your USP <797> environmental monitoring program only identifies problems after an excursion, are you really in control? Rhonda Lintner outlines 3 levels of maturity: compliance, data trending, and genus-level identification.

Infection Control Today has published several articles on CBIC's updated IPU requirements for Industry Partners. We have been given permission to post the joint response from CBIC and APIC on the coverage by ICT and on social media.

There’s a bat in the hospital. Now what? Before anyone swats it, grabs it, or throws it away, infection prevention needs staff to understand one thing: That bat may be critical evidence in determining whether patients and employees need rabies PEP. One bat. One bad decision. A potentially enormous exposure investigation.

CBIC's new IPU requirements are intended to protect continuing education from commercial influence. But they could also change who provides education, who funds it, and who ultimately pays for it. When “free” education gets more expensive to provide, somebody has to pick up the bill.

PCR hasn't killed culture. As AMR surveillance expands, selective culture media remain important for viable pathogen isolation, confirmation, characterization, and susceptibility testing. The global market is projected to reach $6.1B by 2035.

Recent changes from CBIC involving IPUs have opened a much bigger conversation about industry, consultants, commercial bias, continuing education, and professional expertise. In a candid Contagious Conversations discussion, 4 experienced IP professionals ask whether the answer should depend on where an educator works or what that educator actually teaches. It is a conversation the IPC community may need to have sooner rather than later.

Can a UV-C robot make up for a surface that wasn't properly cleaned? Experts say that's the wrong way to think about the technology. UV-C can provide an additional layer of microbial reduction, but factors including shadows, distance, positioning, and exposure time mean it cannot replace thorough manual cleaning and disinfection.