INICC, The International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium, a non-profit philanthropic scientific organization, arises from the itinerant work and training initiated in the 1990s by Dr. Victor D. Rosenthal.

The infections that patients acquire when they are cared for by health personnel, being hospitalized, or when they are cared for on an outpatient basis at the clinic or at home, are called “Health Care Associated Infections (HAI)”.

In 1988, Dr. Rosenthal, founder and president of INICC, received his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires, in 1992 he completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Posadas Hospital, and in 1994 he completed his residency of infectious diseases at the Hospital. Naval.

In 1993, working as an attending physician, specialist in infectious diseases, he decided that his path was no longer just to continue giving diagnosis and treatment to patients with HAI, and decided to dedicate the rest of his life to training and researching in the area of the prevention of HAI, in order to thus be able to transmit their knowledge in all the places that it is necessary because their rates of HAI are very high.

Between 1994 and 1996, Dr. Víctor Rosenthal received training in the US in the specialty of surveillance, prevention and control of HAI, specifically at APIC, SHEA, CDC and JCAHO. In 2000 he completed his training in research methodology, statistics, epidemiology, quality of health care, and health economics with Harvard University, in 2001 he completed his training in the prevention of HAI at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1998 Dr. Rosenthal has developed a software to measure HAI, their extra stay, extra costs, profile of microorganisms, bacterial resistance, benchmark of data from hospitals with the rates of HAI in the CDC NHSN of United States, monitoring of compliance with the hand hygiene, monitoring compliance with infection prevention bundles to prevent HAIs, such as central line and peripheral lines associated bloodstream infections, mechanical ventilators associated respiratory tract infections, urinary catheter associated urinary tract infections, surgical site infections, and others.

In 2002, after several scientific publications with data from hospitals in Argentina about HAI, and having given conferences on this subject in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey and India, and having heard the request of those attending these conferences, to share his methodology with them, Dr. Rosenthal created the International Consortium for Nosocomial Infection Control (INICC).

The objective of the creation of INICC was to train pro bono doctors and nurses to carry out the surveillance and prevention of HAI, as well as to provide them with free access to the use of the software that Dr. Rosenthal had designed and used successfully in Argentina. Also to compile all the information collected in these participating countries, and then in 2006 to make the first publication sharing data on HAI rates in 8 countries with limited resources. This publication was published in the renown scientific peer review journal “Annals of Internal Medicine”, and had an enormous impact, being cited in around 1000 opportunities. This was the trigger for global programs such as the World Health Organization promoting hand hygiene, and many programs coordinated by scientific societies and the Ministries of Health of a huge number of countries. This was the first time that the HAI problem was made known from countries with limited resources.

In 2007, the INICC Foundation was created in Argentina and has operated there until 2020. Throughout that period, the INICC Foundation has provided free training and free software to all participating hospitals. In 2012 the INICC Foundation carried out a very significant update of the HAI surveillance and prevention software, and it became an online platform.

From 2002 to 2020, it carried out a very intense training activity for health personnel in low and middle income countries. 2500 doctors and nurses were trained, from 2000 intensive care units, from more than 1000 hospitals, from more than 500 cities, from more than 50 countries, of the 6 WHO regions. About 400 scientific investigations were carried out. These scientific investigations were cited in more than 12,000 opportunities, and due to them, 10 international awards for scientific research were won, four of them won in the United States.

In 2021, Dr. Rosenthal emigrates to the United States, he is appointed as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

In that same year 2021, the INICC Foundation was created in the United States, based in Florida. The objective of this Foundation is to continue updating scientific information, carrying out scientific research, developing and updating software, and all this to collaborate with health professionals from both low and middle income countries, as well as collaborate with high-income countries, including the United States of America. Always with the same primary objective, to reduce HAI, its extra stay, its costs, its mortality, and its high bacterial resistance.