CDC awards $10 million in fight against hospital-acquired infections

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday awarded $10 million to five medical centers to develop and test new approaches to combating infections acquired in hospitals and other care settings.

An estimated one out of 20 hospital patients contracts some kind of infection during medical care. While the Democrats' healthcare reform law penalizes hospitals that fail to make progress on the issue, the CDC program dates much further back.

The grants are part of the centers' Prevention Epicenters Program, which started in 1997. They're awarded every five years based on peer-reviewed applications and encourage team collaborations.

This year's recipients are: 

• Chicago Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention Epicenter (includes Cook County Health & Hospital System and Rush University Medical Center);

• Duke University Prevention Epicenter (Duke University);

• Translation Prevention Research Epicenter (Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Wellesley, Mass.);

• Southeastern Pennsylvania Adult and Pediatric Prevention Epicenter Network (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia); and

• Washington University and BJC Epi-Center for Prevention of Healthcare Associated Infections (Washington University, St. Louis.)

Some of the innovative solutions being tested include combining bleach and ultraviolet light to clean hospital rooms; new tests that help distinguish patients who need antibiotics from those who don't, as a means of preventing antibiotic-resistant infections; methods that can help doctors anticipate when medical devices being used to treat a patient are on the verge of causing an infection; and treating patients with living microorganisms that are harmless to the patient but compete with harmful germs.