by Driving better hand hygiene
Illinois, at about 4% of the US population, is expecting to close out the year with traffic deaths around a heartbreaking 975. Now, add the 99,000 acute care annual HAI fatalities with the 380,000 in long-term care, both CDC numbers, and multiply by 4%. That is 19,160 estimated HAI deaths in Illinois hospitals and nursing homes this year. In recent research we conducted with healthcare nursing, they estimated that “80% of HAI fatalities could be prevented with a timely hand wash.”
So 15,328 lives could be saved annually with better handwashing in Illinois. Let’s say this estimate multiplied by other estimates is nonsense. So, let’s be conservative and cut the number in half – 7,664.
Could anybody please tell us why this is not seen as an urgent problem in Illinois and across the nation? It is clearly a slow-grow annually recurring national disaster which outstrips hurricane deaths and ten years of U.S. losses in the Middle East . . . just in Illinois!
