Hundreds of millions of patients are affected by Nosocomial infection (also referred to as Healthcare Associated Infections, HAIs) around the world every year, leading to significant mortality and huge financial losses. HAIs account for 2 million cases and about 80,000 deaths a year in India. This high burden was attributed to unsafe patient care.

In India, over-crowded hospitals with poor infrastructure, lack of required hygiene, low healthcare professionals to patient ratio, inappropriate usage of invasive devices and antibiotics, and lack of regulation enforcement contribute to nosocomial infections-associated deaths in India.

More than one out of every 6 patients acquire a potential life-threatening Nosocomial infection in a Medical ICU. Also, occurrence of infection was associated with significantly higher treatment cost.

Studies on the costs of NI^$ have used different methods, definitions and degrees of stringency when calculating indirect costs and therefore, still uncertainty prevails over their true economic impact on the community and on the workplace economy. Drug and especially antibiotic acquisition in addition to increased length of stay are the widely and well described parameters. Extra cost of NI^$ include bed, intensive care unit stay, hematological, biochemical, microbiological and radiological tests, antibiotics, other drugs, extra surgical procedures and working hours. In addition to high morbidity and mortality, one of the well described parameters is the extra length of stay in the hospital. High mortality rates and economic expense which NI^$ represents emphasizes the justification for measures of control of NI^$

Drugs’ acquisition cost formed a major part of the extra cost due to nosocomial infections. In the drugs’ acquisition cost, almost half of the share was for Anti-microbial drugs. The usage of anti-microbial drugs was higher in infected patients than in patients in the control group (49% vs. 41%)

Cost of drugs is a major contributor to the costs of HAIs as evidenced by five times higher costs in cases than in controls. In view of this, it is recommended that hospitals should take infection control as a high-priority area. This can be achieved using appropriate prophylaxis at admission especially in ‘‘high-risk’’ and immunocompromised patients, use of aseptic techniques, and complete sterilization of surgical instruments before and during the surgical procedures.

*IFI : Invasive Fungal Infections

NI^$ : Nosocomial Infections