About 30% of hospital-acquired infections can already be prevented using simple and low cost technology. Therefore, surveillance should be used to suggest and evaluate control measures, as well as to describe infection frequency and distribution. Keeping in mind these objectives, we put into question the method proposed by the Ministry of Health in recent years, infection notification by physicians responsible for care provision. The study was carried out at the Paraná Federal University Hospital, from March to June 1987, where notification was compared to active case-finding, used in other countries for 20 years and considered the optimal strategy for hospital-acquired infection surveillance. Both efficacy and efficiency were evaluated in terms of number of identified cases and method cost. Results were favorable to active case-finding, which can be adjusted to different types of national hospitals.
