Healthcare-associated infections pose a major public health threat in long-term care facilities in Europe
An EU-wide survey estimated that 4.2 million healthcare-associated infections occur every year in European long-term care facilities, compared to an estimated 3.5 million occurring in European acute care hospitals, and that on any given day, over 116 400 residents have at least one active healthcare-associated infection.
These data come from a project called HALT-2 that conducted a survey with information on 77 264 residents in 1 181 long-term care facilities in 19 European countries between April and May 2013. This project was developed by ECDC together with a consortium led by the Scientific Institute of Public Health in Brussels.
Furthermore, 46% of the participating facilities had not implemented any of the ten key elements of good antimicrobial stewardship and one in ten centres did not have access to infection prevention and control advice or committee.
Currently, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is coordinating the HALT-3 survey, which results will be published in 2018. Pete Kinross, an expert in surveillance of healthcare-associated infections at the ECDC, pointed out: “these surveys are very relevant, as they serve as a tool to increase awareness and prevention of healthcare-associated infections in these long-term care facilities at the local, national and European level”.
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