الفهرس 
Hospital acquired infectionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hospital acquired infections (HAI) continue to be a major public health problem throughout the world specially between the neonates in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) being very vulnerable group due to defective immunity and the increasing number of technology dependant infants (Zafar et aL, 2001). Sepsis form a significant threat to the well being of neonates particularly in NTCU who suffer from underlying health problem, however, the potential for morbidity and mortality may greatly reduced through prompt diagnosis, treatment and more importantly its prevention (Eicher et al., 2002).
Nosocomial infections often proceed in two steps. The patient first becomes colonized on the skin or mucosal surfaces by a nosocomial strain, originating either from another patient, from staff or from medical equipment. The strain may later become invasive, often due to impaired immune response, and cause infection (Christina et al., 2004).
In the present work, the incidence of nosocomial neonatal sepsis was 12%, where 52 out of 416 neonates admitted to NICU during the study period. It was confirmed that they had acquired infection during their stay in the NICU. These results are nearly similar to that reported by Baker and Edwards (1990) who mentioned that the incidence of neonatal sepsis in the NICU was up to 10% among infants during the first month of life. However, our results are higher than the incidence reported by Kaushik et al.y (1998) who found that neonatal sepsis affected 5.3% ofhospital-bome babies In this study, it was found that the mean age of the neonates was 13 days while the mean gestational age was 33 weeks and the mean birth weight was 1.8 kg. No significant correlation was found between the neonatal age and the rate of nosocomial infection. Moreover, there was a