Professor Kjeld Møller Pedersen is a health economist and one of the leading experts in estimating the costs of healthcare-associated infections. He is working at the University of Southern Denmark in the Department of Business and Economics and has published more than 400 papers and authored 17 books.

On why it is crucial to prevent healthcare-associated infections:
"People  do not realize that we have a surprisingly high number of deaths from healthcare-associated infections. And then we have the human suffering of the survivors too."

On why healthcare-associated infections do not get much attention from decision-makers in healthcare?
"We lack transparency about the consequences  and  frequency of healthcare-associated infections."

On the cost of the healthcare-associated infections
"A simple way is to look at the number of beds that are used for patients with healthcare-associated infections. That is a considerable number! That number can be turned a monetary value".

"If we want to have the real estimate of healthcare-associated infections, you have to track patients for a considerable period of time, including readmissions and cost for the local communities and the sickness/absence. People will be shocked if we provide the figures on that."

Professor Kjeld Møller Pedersen recommends reading the studies by the Australian Professor and Health Economist Nicholas Graves.