The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has announced that it was awarding $10 million to develop and test new approaches to fight hospital-acquired infections, according to the March 14, 2011 Milwaukee Wisconsin Sentinel. The awards were given to five academic medical centers to explore matters such as:

• The use of combinations of bleach and ultraviolet light to clean hospital rooms and prevent infection
• New tests that help distinguish patients who need antibiotics from those who don’t.
• Methods that can help doctors anticipate when medical devices being used to treat a patient are on the verge of causing an infection.
• Treating patients with living microorganisms that are harmless to the patient but compete with harmful germs.

One of the recipients is the University of Pennsylvania, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Adult and Pediatric Epicenter Network.