>That means, say infectious-disease experts, that their best tools for defending patients remain those that depend on the performance of health personnel: handwashing, the use of gloves and gowns, and aggressive environmental cleaning. Yet even research that could improve best practices has been short-changed, says Eli Perencevich, an infectious-diseases physician and epidemiologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City who studies how resistant bacteria move around hospitals. <i>“We haven't invested in research in how to optimize even standard infection-control practices. We just blame the health-care workers when they go wrong.”</i><p>It seems that a possible positive outcome of this could be cleaner hospitals. No infection is better than a treatable infection. Even if CREs are controlled, even if new antibiotics are developed, these outbreaks will keep happening and resistance will keep developing. Developing effective yet practical hygiene procedures is the only way to solve the problem once and for all.