New anti-infection guidelines for hospital doctors

New guidelines have been published for hospital doctors, in an attempt to reduce the rate of healthcare-associated infections.

According to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, around one out of every 20 hospitalised patients here will acquire a healthcare-associated infection, but up to 50% of these infections are preventable.

Only around half of hospital doctors are thought to be compliant with hand hygiene guidelines, and Professor of Clinical Microbiology Hillary Humphries said that compliance is an issue.

"Doctors need to have up-to-date data on surveillance, such as the numbers of infections, and how they vary, so that they themselves can see whether or not there's a problem in their particular hospital and their particular ward and maybe what they can do better to reduce those infections," he said.