Which causes more deaths: infections or medical errors in teaching hospitals?

Overlap: Both of these cause death in teaching and other hospitals. The statistics are hard to come by as infections are common and many patients enter the hospital for infection. Medical errors are a cause of morbidity and death but the data is soft and there is a tendency to exaggerate the 'error' portion of patients having in hospital difficulty. And the two overlap - some infections are due to error.

Depends where: There is a difference between a mistake *causing* a death, and a mistake *not preventing* a death. Some experts fail to make this distinction, and therefore claim that deaths from medical mistakes greatly outweigh death from infectious diseases. Technology and smart computer apps likely will have a big positive effect upon error reduction. In developing countries, answer most likely is infections.