Summary
Noncommunicable diseases, simply put, are long-term diseases that are not passed from person to person. Unlike infectious diseases, which are caused by pathogens and can spread between individuals, noncommunicable diseases are typically the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors.
Julie Storr is an expert in the field of patient safety, quality and infection prevention and control (IPC). In this blog, she explains why infection prevention control is critical in keeping people with noncommunicable diseases safe.
This blog is part of a series on noncommunicable diseases, in support of World Patient Safety Day 2026 (WPSD26).
Content
This year's World Patient Safety Day focuses on safe care for noncommunicable diseases. At first glance, infection prevention and control might be assumed to be largely missing from this year’s conversation but healthcare-associated infection is a universally relevant threat. Infection prevention and control aims to prevent these avoidable infections and the likelihood of their onward transmission associated with the provision of treatment and care.
A risk that is not equally shared
The risk of healthcare-associated infection is not distributed equally. Those most likely to experience serious harm are often those already vulnerable. The already ill, very old or very young, the impoverished or malnourished. Let’s take “the ill”. Within that phrase sits an estimated two billion people worldwide living with noncommunicable diseases. That’s around one in four people on this planet.
These are people living with cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and other long-term conditions, many of whom may be particularly vulnerable to infection or its consequences. I wrote about this in a paper exploring infection prevention and control in relation to the global development agenda and universal health coverage specifically.
When noncommunicable diseases and infection prevention and control meet
People living with noncommunicable diseases may be particularly vulnerable to infection for a combination of reasons related to the underlying condition, its treatment and their interaction with healthcare. In addition to the example of asthma, diabetes for example, can impair immune responses and wound healing, with textbooks referring to diabetes as a modifiable risk factor for the development of a surgical site infection. It also increases the risks of urinary tract infection in people with indwelling urinary catheters, and the list could go on. Cancer and its treatments can suppress immunity, again making people vulnerable to infection.
Across these and other long-term conditions there is often repeated contact with healthcare. When such encounters include the need for invasive devices or surgery or exposure to antibiotics the risk of healthcare-associated infection, including with multidrug resistant organisms, is heightened. The consequences can be devastating - exacerbating the persons condition and contributing to disability or death.
These risks may be compounded for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, where the burden of noncommunicable diseases often intersects with poverty, poorer living conditions and inequalities in access to high-quality healthcare.
Patients do not experience health care in categories
We talk about communicable and noncommunicable diseases in distinct terms, as separate categories. this serves a purpose at the policy and planning level, but it is somewhat artificial when we think of people’s experiences of health care. I wrote about some of the issues associated with this most recently in a blog for Patient Safety Learning. Work from Tanzania provides a practical example of this thinking, integrating communicable and noncommunicable disease care at the primary healthcare level and explicitly recognising infection prevention and control as part of making that integrated care safe.
Someone living with diabetes, cancer or asthma may be receiving care for a noncommunicable disease, but they remain vulnerable to healthcare-associated infection throughout their healthcare journey, and potentially to more serious consequences if an infection occurs. It was therefore refreshing to see the formal campaign announcement for this year’s World Patient Safety Day explicitly identify healthcare-associated infection as one of the major sources of preventable harm for people living with noncommunicable diseases.
Final thoughts
Every encounter a person with a noncommunicable disease has with the health care system creates potential risks alongside the valuable and critical treatment and care that they receive. Procedures and interventions such as the insertion of vascular or urinary catheters, courses of immunosuppressive therapy can all act as entrance doors for microbes. These procedures and interventions also create huge opportunities for infection prevention and control measures to protect people from harm.
Infection prevention and control is therefore highly relevant when we think about keeping vulnerable people with long term conditions safe. Collaboration across disciplines and campaigns matters immensely in this regard.
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