Highly resistant bacteria in France

Monique

In diverse hospitals in the north of France a bacteria resistant against almost all antibiotics is on the rise. Of the 112 patients since summer, 18 have died.

The pathogen is Acinetobacter baumannii.


And this is just the start if we don't come up with some good antibiotic regulations and some new drugs.

chroot

Damn you, co-evolution. [:(]

- Warren

wasteofo2

I smell another SARS style news frenzy coming up...

Then again, over 5,000 French people died from slightly above average New York summer temperatures, so who knows, maybe this is just another indication of French inferiority...

Monique

5,000? You forgot the 1: it was 15,000 at least. Don't forget we don't have airconditioning in houses here in Europe, in NY they do and are thus better prepaired to deal with such situations.

wasteofo2

Ok, I understand that a large amount of the people who died were sick/elderly/infants, but if all those deaths aren't a sign of the physical inferiority of the french people, then it's a clear indication of inferiority of the french govt. It really wouldn't have been that hard to do quite a bit of things to help out people.

They could have imported air conditioners and set up the extra power lines and saved quite a bit of the people in cities and large suburbs.

They could have given large public areas like libraries and recreation centers air conditioning and told people to spend their time there if they were in high risk categories during the day.

They could have done alot of things that a government has the power, money and ingenuity to do when thousands of their citizens are in danger that a 15 year old kid can't think of off the top of his head.

I'd certainly hope that the govt of france and any other simmilarly afflicted countries would have made it one of the foremost parts of their agendas to prepare their country for any future summers which might reach temperatures that are commonly reached and exceded in america and result in only a few hundred (if even that many) heat related deaths nationally.

Jikx

Perhaps in france the temperatures ever reached that high .. thus no need to prepare for such situations.

And no offence wasteofo2, I just found it amusing that your solution is so much akin to the old joke that went along the lines of "Global warming? Why don't we just turn on all the airconditioners! "

adrenaline

THE FACT THAT over twelve thousand elderly died can be traced to two main triggering events.

One, the temperature, which rarely goes above 100 went above 100.

Two, Many of the health care workers and personell and the general population , all take their vacations in august.

Eighty percent of the elderly died in understaffed nursing homes, the others at home where thier children had left them unattended.

The nursing homes were understaffed due to the yearly vacations.

The one benefit of the overly litiginous malpractice environment of the US is that no area , wether nursing home, hospital, private practice etc. allows their majority health care personell or doctors to take their vacations en masse and thus become lacking for personelle coverage. This will probably be a policy now in France and other European countries where such cross coverage liability has never been seen as an issue. Remember, the elderly have lost almost all ability to sense thirst and thier thermoregulatory mechanisms are impaired which makes them more susceptible to dehydration and heat exhaustion unless someone is pushing fluids and monitoring them for over heating.

wasteofo2

jeez, that's even worse, they're all so concentrated that it really wouldn't have been that hard to put air conditioners in the windows...