Journal – the lancet global health
Article type – Journal research article – Clinical research
Publication date – Aug – 2022
Authors – Purva Mathur, Paul Malpiedi, Kamini Walia, Padmini Srikantiah, Sunil Gupta, Ayush Lohiya, Arunaloke Chakrabarti, Pallab Ray, Manisha Biswal, Neelam Taneja, Priscilla Rupali, Veeraraghavan Balaji, Camilla Rodrigues, Vijaya Lakshmi Nag, Vibhor Tak, Vimala Venkatesh, Chiranjay Mukhopadhyay, Vijayshri Deotale, Kanne Padmaja, Chand Wattal, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Tadepalli Karuna, Bijayini Behera, Sanjeev Singh, Reema Nath, Raja Ray, Sujata Baveja, Bashir A Fomda, Khumanthem Sulochana Devi, Padma Das, Neeta Khandelwal, Prachi Verma, Prithwis Bhattacharyya, Rajni Gaind, Lata Kapoor, Neil Gupta, Aditya Sharma, Daniel VanderEnde, Valan Siromany, Kayla Laserson, Randeep Guleria, On Behalf Of The Indian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance Network Collaborators
Keywords – Health-care-associated infections (HAIs), India, intensive care units (ICUs), low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs)
Open access – Yes
Speciality – Surgical infection
World region Southern Asia
Country: India
Language – English
Submitted to the One Surgery Index on August 24, 2022 at 5:27 am
Abstract:

Background
Health-care-associated infections (HAIs) cause significant morbidity and mortality globally, including in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Networks of hospitals implementing standardised HAI surveillance can provide valuable data on HAI burden, and identify and monitor HAI prevention gaps. Hospitals in many LMICs use HAI case definitions developed for higher-resourced settings, which require human resources and laboratory and imaging tests that are often not available.

Methods
A network of 26 tertiary-level hospitals in India was created to implement HAI surveillance and prevention activities. Existing HAI case definitions were modified to facilitate standardised, resource-appropriate surveillance across hospitals. Hospitals identified health-care-associated bloodstream infections and urinary tract infections (UTIs) and reported clinical and microbiological data to the network for analysis.

Findings
26 network hospitals reported 2622 health-care-associated bloodstream infections and 737 health-care-associated UTIs from 89 intensive care units (ICUs) between May 1, 2017, and Oct 31, 2018. Central line-associated bloodstream infection rates were highest in neonatal ICUs (>20 per 1000 central line days). Catheter-associated UTI rates were highest in paediatric medical ICUs (4·5 per 1000 urinary catheter days). Klebsiella spp (24·8%) were the most frequent organism in bloodstream infections and Candida spp (29·4%) in UTIs. Carbapenem resistance was common in Gram-negative infections, occurring in 72% of bloodstream infections and 76% of UTIs caused by Klebsiella spp, 77% of bloodstream infections and 76% of UTIs caused by Acinetobacter spp, and 64% of bloodstream infections and 72% of UTIs caused by Pseudomonas spp.

Interpretation
The first standardised HAI surveillance network in India has succeeded in implementing locally adapted and context-appropriate protocols consistently across hospitals and has been able to identify a large number of HAIs. Network data show high HAI and antimicrobial resistance rates in tertiary hospitals, showing the importance of implementing multimodal HAI prevention and antimicrobial resistance containment strategies.

Funding
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cooperative agreement with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

Translation
For the Hindi translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

OSI Number – 21727

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