According to a new study, Health care-associated (HAI) infections are at least twice as high as in high-income countries.

The research found that factors increasing the risks of these infections include poor hygiene and waste disposal, inadequate infrastructure and equipment, understaffing, overcrowding, lack of basic infection control knowledge and also employing unsafe procedures.

Co-author, Benedetta Allegranzi, Technical Lead for the Clean Care is Safer Care programme at the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said, "Health-care associated infections have long been established as the biggest cause of avoidable harm and unnecessary death in the health systems of high-income countries."

Allegranzi further said that the situation is worse in the developing world where the level of such infections is twice as high. One in three patients having surgery in some settings with limited resources becomes infected, the researcher claimed.

The study says that surveillance covering the whole system, training, education and good communication, using devices appropriately, following proper procedures and hand hygiene practices are the solutions to the problem.

The surveillance systems are in place in high income places they are not implemented in most of the middle- and low-income countries.

Didier Pittet, Head of the Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety at the University of Geneva Hospitals and co-author of the Lancet study noted that such infections are much lower in high-income countries because workers are trained and the support infrastructure is present.

The study was published in edition of The Lancet on December 10, 2010.