Health care-associated infections, are the most frequent adverse event in health-care delivery worldwide. Hundreds of millions of patients are affected by health care-associated infections worldwide each year, leading to significant mortality and financial losses for health systems. The leading cause of infection is the prolonged and inappropriate use of invasive devices and antibiotics, high-risk and sophisticated procedures, immuno-suppression and other severe underlying patient conditions; insufficient application of standard and isolation precautions. As is the case for many other patient safety issues, health care-associated infections create additional suffering and come at a high cost for patients and their families. Infections prolong hospital stays, create long-term disability, and increase resistance to antimicrobials, represent a massive additional financial burden for health systems, Generate high costs for patients and their family, and cause unnecessary deaths. In order to achieve the best practices in prevention, healthcare workers with all specialization must understand how important it is to work hand in hand and complete each other to break the chain of infection.

Chain of infection have six links; the agent, reservoir, portal of exit, mode of transmission, portal of entry and susceptible Host. If we understand the nature and dynamics of each link we can proceed with the best solution that disconnect the link and make the infection end in one point where all efforts are gathered to contain it and safe patients and staff. Reviewing new updates in researches and studies is very essential in infection prevention as it improves our knowledge of the mechanisms of infection and based on it comes creating the best means and methods to guarantee safety and prevention to patient and staff.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES