[Milestones in the fight against nosocomial infections in Hungary].

The world-wide struggle against nosocomial infections began with the work of the well known Hungarian physician, Ignác Semmelweis, in the middle of the 19th century. His activity is the milestone in the fight against the nosocomial infections not only in Hungary but internationally, as well. The recognition made in the 1950-s, of more than sixty different sorts of hospital-acquired infections frequently occurring in almost all departments of Hungarian hospitals formed a major momentum. The acknowledgement of this situation by the highest National medical professional council, with all the favourable consequences for future solutions, can be taken as the third historical continuation. The next important step was the recognition that the immunocompromised state of the hospitalized patients is the basis of becoming a victim of a nosocomial infection. The epidemiology of these diseases should be called "clinical epidemiology" and may be considered as an independent discipline. The major step against the struggle of nosocomial infections was the introduction of antibiotic prophylaxis. The following step was the construction of a special informatical, preventive and control system, collectively called "surveillance". The institutional and professional bases of all these activities were provided by the Central Municipal Hospital for Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Traumatology at Budapest.