Some 13,500 patients in Israeli hospitals died or were infected by illnesses while receiving care in 2017, an internal Ministry of Health report revealed yesterday.

This is an increase from four years ago, according to the Jerusalem Post which reported earlier this year that “between 4,000 and 6,000 patients in Israel die from complications of hospital-acquired infections every year, in many cases from antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according a State Comptroller’s Office report from 2013.”

The revelations come after Yedioth Ahronoth on Sunday published a list of Israeli hospitals with the worst rates infection rates while receiving care.

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are considered among the greatest public health challenges globally, but the Israeli State Comptroller report had attributed the main causes of the spread of such illnesses to the “poor hand hygiene, lack of hospital visitor awareness regarding the spread of infections, hospital environmental conditions, an insufficient number of healthcare workers and inadequate isolation of patients with infectious diseases.”

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