Hand Hygiene

Dr. Doussou Touré arrives for work at Coléah Medical Centre in Guinea. She washes her hands from a bucket set up in front of the building, proceeds to a screening area where her temperature is checked and recorded and only then enters the bustling facility that she supervises.

A simulation of how the so-called superbug carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) might spread among healthcare facilities found that coordinated efforts prevented more than 75 percent of the often-severe infections that would have otherwise occurred over a five-year period. The study was led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published last month in the American Journal of Epidemiology.