Call Your Poison Center When the Unthinkable Happens

Author: Robert J. Geller, M.D. Georgia Poison Center; American Association of Poison Control Centers It’s a moment of sheer panic. You find your child chewing something and holding an open bottle of medicine. You don’t know how much, if any, medici…

Keeping Medicines Up and Away and Out of Sight of Toddlers

Author – Dr. Dan Budnitz Today, CDC announced the launch of an exciting new education program for protecting children from unintentional medication overdoses – Up and Away and Out of Sight.  We’ve blogged about the large number of children who e…

Antibiotic use in the United States: where do we stand?

Author – Ramanan Laxminarayan, Ph.D., director of Extending the Cure (ETC) Patients in the United States are among the most intensive users of antibiotics in the world, but you may be surprised to learn that overall per capita outpatient antibiotic p…

Using Antibiotics Wisely in Long Term Care Settings

AMDA – Dedicated to Long Term Care Many of us have or will have loved ones in long term care facilities. These healthcare settings are critical to providing healthcare and everyday assistance to people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, who othe…

Time to rethink antibiotic use in long-term care facilities

Author — Nimalie Stone, M.D. Medical Epidemiologist CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion With increasing drug-resistant bacteria and complicating conditions from antibiotic use like diarrhea from C. difficile on the rise, we must look at …

Government Takes Action to Combat Antibiotic Resistance

Author – Steve Solomon, MD Director of the Office of Antimicrobial Resistance, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Office of Infectious Diseases, CDC. Antimicrobial resistance is a …

Protect Cancer Patients from Infections

Author: Alice Guh, CDC medical officer and co-lead of Preventing Infections in Cancer Patients initiative As clinicians, we know that the nearly one million patients who receive outpatient cancer treatment each year are at risk for serious infections t…

International Infection Prevention Week Celebrates a Milestone

Author: Russell N. Olmsted, MPH, CIC 2011 President, APIC Director, Infection Prevention & Control Services, St. Joseph Mercy Health System, Ann Arbor, Michigan International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW), which occurs October 16–22, 2011, represents the 25th anniversary of the commemoration of the importance of infection prevention around the globe.  It does not seem possible that […]

New Recommendations for Pediatric Pneumonia Treatment

Author: John S Bradley, MD Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital and Health Center Every year, pneumonia kills more than 2 million children ages 5 years and younger worldwide. Yet the only existing national guidelines fo…

Ambulatory Care Nurses: Take A Stand Against Infections

Author – Linda Brixey, RN President of the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN) I am excited the CDC is continuing to develop additional tools and resources for infection control. As the president of the American Academy of Ambulatory …

Infection Prevention and Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

Author – Bret T. Petersen, MD, FASGE, Chairman, Quality Assurance in Endoscopy Committee, American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Reports of infections subsequent to gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy intermittently gain national media coverage….