Hospital-acquired infections in paediatric medical wards at a tertiary hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

AbstractBackground: Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) impact care and costs in hospitals across the globe. There are minimal data on HAIs in sub-Saharan Africa and data specific to paediatrics are especially limited.Objective: To describe the incidence of HAIs in the paediatric medical units at Grey’s Hospital, a tertiary government hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.Methods: The Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) team collects data on all laboratory-confirmed infections, including from paediatric patients in two medical units (52 beds), the paediatric intensive/high-care unit (PICU, 8 beds) and the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU, 23 beds). HAIs are defined as infections: (i) not present (active or incubating) at the time of admission, and (ii) with onset >48 h after hospital admission. Daily patient statistics allow calculation of infections per 100 admissions and infections per 1000 patient days.Results: In the non-ICU setting, there were 7.1 and 7.0 HAIs per 100 admissions in 2013 and 20...