In Europe, most long-term care facilities are for the elderly: nursing homes, residential homes and mixed facilities. ECDC monitors the burden of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use through repeated point prevalence surveys.
Healthcare-associated infections are infections acquired by patients during their stay in a hospital or another healthcare setting. Although some of these infections can be treated easily, others may more seriously affect a patient’s health, increasing their stay in the hospital and hospital costs, and causing considerable distress to these patients.
Surgical site infections are associated with longer post-operative hospital stays, additional surgical procedures, may require intensive care and often result in higher mortality.
Hepatitis C is a liver disease caused by infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). HCV can cause both acute and chronic hepatitis infection, ranging in severity from a mild illness that lasts only a few weeks to a serious, lifelong illness resulting in cirrhosis and liver cancer.