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Can a robot clean a hospital room just as well as a person? According to new research out of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, that is indeed the case. Chetan Jinadatha, MD, MPH, assistant professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine and chief of infectious diseases at the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System in Temple, is studying the effectiveness of a germ-zapping robot to clean hospital rooms, which could hold the key to preventing the spread of "superbugs" - in turn, saving countless dollars and, most importantly, lives.

This Report examines surface cleaning and disinfection in the face of emerging infectious disease and the pathogens that can challenge disinfectant efficacy. It reviews the hierarchy of pathogen resistance and susceptibility to disinfectants, discusses various factors that impact disinfectant efficacy, and addresses current pathogens of concern.

The story of how Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, turned around an exponentially growing Ebola outbreak is intriguing. The World Health Organization (WHO)’s team and national officials, aided by veterans from WHO’s polio eradication group in India, decentralized the response, using quality management principles that empowered local teams and held them accountable for results. These local sector teams involved more than 4,000 community members, using business best practices and an incident management system to vastly improve surveillance, case finding, contact tracing, and overall management of key response activities.

Dr. Felix Sarria Baez was one of hundreds of Cuban doctors sent as a Foreign Medical Team to support the Ebola response in West Africa in October 2014. While working there, he contracted Ebola himself. He survived and returned to Sierra Leone to further help Ebola patients. This is his story.

It may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that bacteria have an immune system - in their case to fight off invasive viruses called phages. And like any immune system -- from single-celled to human -- the first challenge of the bacterial immune system is to detect the difference between "foreign" and "self." This is far from simple, as viruses, bacteria and all other living things are made of DNA and proteins. A group of researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University has now revealed exactly how bacteria do this. Their results were published online today in Nature.

Dr. Cota Vallenas talks about her experiences in the early days of the Ebola outbreak as an expert in infection prevention and control. She reminds us that healthcare workers are among the most vulnerable and a cultural change is needed around self-protection to ensure these frontline workers don’t become infected.

It is estimated that U.S. healthcare institutions spend $9.8 billion annually treating healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) rank among the top five most expensive HAIs (Zimlichman, 2013).

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a major health concern, despite being largely preventable. Standard precautions are the minimum infection prevention practices that apply to all patient care, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status of the patient, in any setting where healthcare is delivered. These basic but effective practices are designed to both protect healthcare workers (HCW) and prevent HCWs from spreading infections among patients.