Nightmare bacteria causing death in hospitals

[Evo]

It sounds like if hospitals take necessary precautions, deaths from the new resistant strains of bacteria can be reduced and even stopped. I am posting this so that more people will be aware of the risks and can ask about it if they need to stay at the hospital. I know I will if I have to have surgery again, and I will demand that proper precautions are taken by doctors and staff that come into contact with me.

"Our strongest antibiotics don't work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections," Dr Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement. He said doctors, hospitals and public health officials must work together to "stop these infections from spreading."

Over the past decade more and more hospitalized patients have been incurably infected with the bugs, Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them, according to a new CDC report. The report did not say how many patients were killed by the bacteria.

The CDC is trying to make healthcare facilities more aware of the resistant germs, since their spread can be controlled with proper precautions and better practices. Israel, for instance, cut CRE infection rates in all 27 of its hospitals by more than 70 percent in one year.

Such measures include such standard infection control precautions as washing hands, as well as grouping patients with CRE together and dedicating staff, rooms and equipment to the care of patients with CRE alone, and using antibiotics sparingly. When an acute-care hospital in Florida had a yearlong CRE outbreak, implementing such measures cut the percentage of patients who got CRE to zero from 44 percent.

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/nightmare-bacteria-shrugging-off-antibiotics-on-rise-in-u-s

 

[atyy]

The US CDC has several levels of measures. Here's their lowest level, for all facilities: http://www.cdc.gov/hai/organisms/cre/cre-toolkit/f-level-prevention-supmeasures.html#facility-recommendations