David Goldhill wrote, "My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy. He wrote this in 2009. Why do we not hear more about this since then?
In 2008, there were 37,261 traffic accidents with 11,773 fatalities, but organizations like Mother Against Drunk-driving are will throw $26 million annually, to fight for harsher sentencing laws and stricter enforcement. This stricter enforcement resulted in the arrest of almost 1.5 million people in the U.S. in 2008.
The deaths that occur thorough the spread of infection in hospitals do not result in any arrests but may be just as criminal since they are preventable but there is no enforcement, and no organizations with big budgets to lobby for legislation. In fact, there is just the opposite.
The question becomes: "Why do we pay hospitals for treating people they make sick? Where is the incentive for them to change practices if we do?"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/
There is at least some hope that this will change at somepoint.
"There’s a new tool for tracking the spread of infections and diseases in hospitals. Developed by the Canadian company Infonaut, this tool tracks the movements of health care workers in hospitals, including if they’ve washed their hands or not! Toronto General will be the first hospital in the world to use this technology. Dr. Michael Gardam is Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the University Health Network in Toronto, and he explains why the data collected will be invaluable, and how they’re ensuring this won’t be a “big brother” type surveillance situation."
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2012/03/spark-176-march-18-21-2012/
