A surgical infection prevention program first proven in Ethiopia scaled successfully to five low-resource hospitals in Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, India, and Bolivia. Among 1,865 surgical patients, 30-day surgical site infections dropped from 28.4% to 12.1%—a 49% relative reduction. Compliance with WHO checklist use, antibiotic timing, antisepsis, sterile technique, and gauze counts also improved. Knowledge transfer from Ethiopian clinicians was key to local adoption. The results show this model can be exported across diverse settings to reduce preventable surgical harm.
Journal Article by None None, Nofal MR (…) Weiser TG et 11 al. in JAMA Surg