The impact of healthcare-associated infections on patients and hospitals

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a significant global health problem. This research explores the impact of HAIs on population sub-groups, including women and children, and the essential role of water, sanitation and hygiene in addressing antimicrobial resistance.

In low- and middle-income countries, 83 million people develop infections in healthcare facilities every year, such as sepsis, urinary tract infections and respiratory infections like pneumonia. The impact of HAIs are not uniform across populations, with vulnerable patients more likely to be infected and suffer worse health outcomes – including women, newborns, young children and the elderly and chronically sick.

This study showed that women and children make up more than 60.6% of annual cases of HAIs. Moreover, they are disproportionately affected when preventable deaths and healthy life years lost are considered:

• Every year, 9.5 million people die from HAIs, of which 64% are women and children
• 302 million healthy life years are lost annually to HAIs, of which 77.3% are women and children 

Around half of HAIs are resistant to first-line and sometimes second-line drugs, fuelling the global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). When hospitals and clinics don't have basic essentials, such as clean water and handwashing facilities, deadly infections spread fast, leaving doctors with little choice but to prescribe antibiotics to protect vulnerable patients.

Providing access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in healthcare facilities, along with healthcare waste management and environmental cleaning, could reduce the number of HAIs by 50%. Yet the research finds global Official Development Assistance in WASH has halved in recent years.

This research summary focuses on healthy life years lost from HAIs by population sub-group, and contrasts this with the concerning lack of priority given to WASH – which is essential to tackling AMR.  

Top image: Domingas holds her child during a consultation at the Meripo Health Centre in Cuamba, Niassa Province, Mozambique, July 2022.