Importance of Prevention and Control of Nosocomial Infections in Iran

Nosocomial infection (NI) is considered as a hospital-acquired infection by a patient admitted to hospital for other reason than mentioned infection. Otherwise, an infection occurred in hospital and at the time of admission, the patient did not have the infection and also was not in the incubation period (1). Reducing the level of patient immunity; the increasing variety of medical techniques and invasive procedures creates potentially paths of infection, transmission of resistant to treatment bacteria, and poor infection control practices can promote infection among hospitalized patients. 8.7% of patients admitted to hospital had NI. More than 1.4 million people worldwide at any time are engaged in NI (2). The rates of infection are higher among patients with high susceptibility for example old age, underlying disease, or receiving chemotherapy (3). According National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance (NNIS), reported from 44 medical universities in Iran in 2011, from 5249877 hospitalized patients for 38604 patients had occurred NI (mean incidence rate: 0.74%, range from 0.05% in Zabol to 2.66% in Tehran). 54.6% of them were male (Table 1).