HOSPITALS FAIL TO FOLLOW PROPER HYGIENE MEASURES TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF INFECTIONS, SURVEY SHOWS

 

Some of the worst infections are contracted in the hospital, although people would not expect to get sicker while recovering in a hospital, but survey says that in some cases hospitals fail to follow even the most routine measures to prevent nosocomial infections.

And in some cases, the infections the patient contracts while in the hospital can be deadly.  

Every year about 14,000 Americans die while in the hospital after contracting severe cases of an intestinal bacteria, called Clostridium Difficilis, a cousin of the more deadly Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism.  Clostridium D., or C. Diff. as it is called in medical parlance, is not the same bacteria that circulated twenty years ago.  

The new strains, thanks to our addiction to antibiotics and the presence of antibiotics in the food chain, are much more antibiotic resistant, and in its severest form can cause severe complications or death in the patient.  

The new strain, which emerged in the mid-2000's is part of a growing number of nosocomial infections that are becoming antibiotic resistant.  And the numbers are growing. 

In 1993 only 100,000 cases were reported of the infection stateside.  In 2009, that number was up to 336,000, of which 9% died while in the hospital after contracting the illness.  

This is due to the fact that simple actions like daily wipedowns of surfaces that are touched frequently with antibacterial solutions, washing hands with soap and limiting the use of antibiotics.  

Some of the problems come from lack of information.  Another is that C.Diff is difficult to isolate in the laboratory, so that tracking the pathogen from one patient to another or from hospital to hospital is very difficult. 

One of the most important measures, says Deverick Anderson, ass. prof. of medicine at Duke University, is washing hands with soap and water.  

However only 77% of those caretakers surveyed were following the hand washing procedure, and that they did not enforce the same on the patient, where only 10% of hospitals mandated hand washing in C.Diff infected patients

Source: Scientific American 4.8.13