FRIDAY, Dec. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Developing countries experience a much higher burden of health-care-associated infection than do high-income nations, according to a meta-analysis published online Dec. 10 in The Lancet.
Benedetta Allegranzi, M.D., of the World Health Organization in Geneva, and colleagues pooled data from 220 articles concerned with infection incidence or prevalence in developing countries to assess the epidemiology of health-care-associated infection in these countries.
The researchers found the prevalence of health-care-associated infection to be much higher in developing countries, at 15.5 per 100 patients, than in the United States or Europe. For patients in intensive care units, the rate was 47.9 per 1,000 patient-days -- at least three times the density reported in the United States. Surgical site infection, the leading hospital infection, was also much higher than in developed countries, at 5.6 per 100 surgical procedures.
"The burden of health-care-associated infection in developing countries is high. Our findings indicate a need to improve surveillance and infection-control practices," the authors write.
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