Infection control: old problems and new challenges

Infection control faces radical changes at the beginning of the third millennium. The first part of this review focuses on problems not yet solved, such as 1) surveillance systems, which should be active and extremely flexible; 2) infection outbreaks in hospitals and strategies to avoid them; 3) hand washing and alternatives such as rapid hand antisepsis; 4) water and food in the hospital as potential reservoirs of nosocomial pathogens; 5) upgrading of infection control programs to turn them into systems to improve the quality of care; 6) fatal Gram-negative bacteremias in hospitals from developing countries, which can be avoided with better standards of care; 7) the elemental role of the microbiology laboratory in the prevention and control of infections; 8) the unprecedented crisis due to the emergence of specific multi-resistant pathogens; 9) the risks for healthcare workers, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV, SARS, and hemorrhagic fevers; and 10) the need for the consistent application of guidelines. The second part of this review focuses on new challenges for infection control, such as 1) the ever-growing number of immunocompromised patients and basic control measures to avoid opportunistic infections; 2) the concerns about the capacity of the public health systems to deal with terrorist acts; 3) the practice of high-risk procedures in facilities lacking trained personnel, efficient laboratories, and protective items; and 4) gene therapy and its potential infectious complications. Consideration is given to the asymmetric development of infection control globally.