WHO Systematic Reviews

Project Team

Chief Investigator: Professor Lesley Price

GCU Co-investigators (2018): Professor Jacqui Reilly, Dr Jen MacDonald, Lynn Melone, Professor Tracy Howe, Professor Kay Currie, Professor Paul Flowers, Dr Sarkis Manoukian, Val Ness, Debbie Waddell, Lucyna Gozdzielewska and Roana Mourad.

External Collaborators: Dr Evonne Curran and the WHO secretariat: Dr Benedetta Allegranzi, Claire Kilpatrick, Julie Storr and Tomas Allen.

GCU Co-investigators (2023): Lucyna Gozdzielewska, Katie Hendry, Agi McFarland and Professor Jacqui Reilly.

Funder: The World Health Organization

Dates: Completed

Background

Healthcare-associated infection has a high social and economic burden worldwide and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, inclusive of associated antimicrobial use and wider costs. The global threat of Antimicrobial Resistance and the movement of both people and infections mean that infection prevention and control measures continue to be vital in every country in order to prevent these infections and conserve antimicrobials for those infections which cannot be avoided. We conducted a systematic review of the published literature to identify national core components for IPC programs to prevent HAI in order to provide an evidence base to develop new World Health Organization Guidelines. This has been updated and published in 2023.

Aim

The review aimed to identify the impact on healthcare-associated infection outcome of national infection prevention and control programs.

Objectives

What is the extent, nature and quality of research on the effectiveness of nationally implemented hospital infection prevention and control programs?What components of national implemented hospital infection prevention and control programs are effective?

Publications

Price L, MacDonald J, Melone L, Howe T, Flowers P, Currie K, Curran E, Ness V, Waddell D, Sarkis M, McFarland A, Kilpatrick C, Storr J, Twyman A, Allegranzi B, Reilly J S. (2017) Effectiveness of national infection prevention and control interventions: a systematic narrative review. The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Price L, Gozdzielewska L, Hendry K, McFarland A, Reilly J. (2023) Effectiveness of national and sub-national interventions for prevention and control of healthcare associated infections in acute hospitals in high- and upper-middle-income counties: systematic review update. The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Storr J, Twyman A, Zingg W, Damani N, Kilpatrick C, Reilly J, Price L, Egger M, Grayson M L, Kelley E, Allegranz B and the WHO Guidelines Development Group (2017) Core components for effective infection prevention and control programmes: new WHO evidence-based recommendations. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control 2017 6:6 

World Health Organization (2016) Guidelines on core components of infection prevention and control programmes at the national and acute health care facility level.