OHD/260934 Support to a point prevalence survey of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in long-term care facilities, including data validation and analysis

Framework contract for scientific, technical and project-management support to ECDC for a multi-year, cross-sectional point prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), antimicrobial use and infection prevention and control / antimicrobial stewardship structure and process indicators in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) in EU/EEA countries. The services will build on the previous HALT/LTCF PPS approach including: preparation and organisation of the PPS; development/adaptation of training materials, case studies, feedback-report templates and data-collection questionnaires; support to national PPS preparation and training; helpdesk, methodological and technical support to national contact points; support to data collection and data-quality checks; production of validated national databases; country- and LTCF-level feedback reports; analysis plans; early and final European survey reports; presentations/minutes for meetings; and related dissemination outputs including open-access fees for manuscripts. The contract also includes validation and additional analytical work to assess whether HAIs reported in LTCFs are correctly reported according to agreed case definitions, whether infections can be assessed as associated with healthcare in the LTCF context, and the impact of potential misclassification on PPS estimates. This may include protocol development for validation sub-studies, training and standardisation of validators, review of source documentation where available, inter-rater agreement analyses, sensitivity analyses, and methodological recommendations for future European LTCF PPS. Interested economic operators are encouraged to provide their feedback by completing the market analysis survey under the following link: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/e5c0d4bf-4900-f38e-3601-8268f775aa58