Hospital hygiene in Europe. The situation in Belgium and The Netherlands

The situation of hospital hygiene in Belgium and in the Netherlands is described in the light of the official regulations, the composition and the functioning of the infection committee and of the hospital hygiene team, and the availability of official or semi-official guidelines. Typical for the Netherlands in the long tradition of issuing guidelines on hospital hygiene, in the beginning in 1966 in the form of an advice of the Health Council, at present in the guidelines of the Working Group on Infection Prevention (WIP). A particularity for Belgium is the financing by the state of the hospital hygiene doctor and the hospital hygiene nurses based on a system of scores in which the beds of specialisms with a higher infection risk count for more than general beds.