Dear Editor:

According to the Centers for Disease Control, hospital-borne pathogens infect 2 million people every year so severely that they will require hospitalization, from which almost 100,000 die in the same period, and a primary cause is the failure of health-care workers to wash their hands between patients.

I urge Roaring Fork Valley hospitals ” which are not yet releasing their hand hygiene compliance rates to do so ” not only to improve our own practices, but especially to help bring other states up to the Colorado’s gold standard as the healthiest in the nation.

Buck Field

Aspen