Infectious Disease Outbreaks: What We Need to Know

Arjun Srinivasan, MD, associate director, Healthcare-associated Infection Prevention Programs, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explains the most important thing that individuals need to know regarding outbreaks.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“The most important thing that I think people need to know about outbreaks is that they do happen; they are a reality in healthcare settings. They are something that we are always working hard to try and prevent, and just as importantly, we work very hard to detect them and to investigate them. These are situations that we always have to take very seriously, that we have to investigate, and they are situations that we need to learn from. A lot of what we know about preventing infections comes from investigating outbreaks, and so, it’s important that we investigate those outbreaks and then use that information [of] what we learn from an outbreak, to try and make healthcare safer for the next people.”