What are health care associated infections?
Health care associated infections, or HAIs, are infections caused by a wide variety of common and unusual bacteria, fungi, and viruses during the course of receiving medical care. Medical advances have brought lifesaving care to patients in need, yet many of those advances come with a risk of HAI. These infections related to medical care can be devastating and even deadly. As our ability to prevent HAIs grows, these infections are increasingly becoming unacceptable. Recent successes in HAI elimination have been encouraging but there is still much work to be done.
Health Care Associated Infections and Antibiotic Resistance (HAI/AR) Program
The HAI/AR program at the Maine CDC works in multiple capacities to prevent and respond to disease surveillance transmission threats in health care settings. See below for a list of some of the activities performed by the program.
Maine CDC's Disease Surveillance team protects public health. Here's how.
- We unite health care and public health communities, as well as patients and the general public, in a common goal of reducing and preventing HAIs, including antibiotic-resistant infections.
- We collaborate with state partners, including health care systems and the private sector, to develop, refine, and implement HAI prevention and antibiotic stewardship strategies.
- We tailor national HAI prevention guidelines and strategies so that state and local communities have the best prevention practices.
- We detect and respond to HAI and antibiotic-resistant threats, provide technical expertise for outbreak response, and conduct infection control assessments to identify areas for improvement.
- We analyze HAI data to identify state, regional, or local patterns/trends to drive prevention and reduction activities and conduct data validation activities to ensure reported data is accurate.
- We serve as a central resource hub for credible, up-to-date, evidence-based information for HAI awareness, prevention, and outbreak response.
Resources
Know Your Role in Preventing Health Care Associated Infection Program (video)