Hospital Acquired Infections

My column in the Syracuse Post Standard on Jan 9 told about my mother-in-law’s hospital acquired infection post surgery in December. Thankfully she’s on the mend. She’s one of the lucky ones.

Response to the column has been overwhelming. From stories to photos, one sadder than the next. Scares the bejeezus out of me! A low estimate of deaths is 90,000 Americans per year.

The AARP wrote an excellent expose of the problem, and I’ve decided to do a follow up on the subject, too. My next column will cover some of the feedback I received and information about legislation. (Want to be notified? Link here: https://archive.trishatorrey.com/icontact/index.htm)

To write the column, I interviewed Dr. Betsy McCaughey, founder of RID (Reduce Infection Deaths). Find her organization’s website at: www.hospitalinfection.org . Dr. McCaughey, former Lt. Governor of New York State founded the organization when she left state government several years ago. RID is doing a remarkable job of influencing state governments and hospitals to begin to rid hospitals of infections. The same approach has been successful in Denmark, Holland and Finland. So why not here in the US, too?

How sad that such a fundamental, and fairly easily fixable, medical problem has to be legislated to be fixed!!

Trisha Torrey
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