BUG'S RIFE
RAH Superbug Outbreak Worsens
TORY SHEPHERD, HEALTH REPORTER
The Advertiser (
Edition: 1 State
Section: News
A SUPERBUG infecting cancer patients at the
Disease experts yesterday told The Advertiser the proposed $1.7
billion hospital to be built on the city railyards was the only hope of
stopping the bug's spread.
Most of the patients in one cancer ward have a strain of
vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium. That ward
has 12 confirmed cases and there are 16 throughout the rest of the hospital.
The bug is highly infectious and potentially fatal to vulnerable people.
The state's top infectious disease expert, Professor John
Turnidge, said some patients would carry the bacteria with them when they moved
to the proposed new RAH.
The State Government said the existing RAH facilities were not
good enough for "optimum infection control" and said the new RAH's
design - primarily single rooms - would help control the bug.
The Advertiser revealed last week wards had been placed into
"lockdown".
Continued Page 4
RAH outbreak of highly infectious bug worsens
From Page 1
This means new patients are not being admitted.
Signs warning of the infection in wards D6 and C6 have been
erected.
Those wards house longer-term, seriously ill patients who are
most at risk from superbugs.
Professor Turnidge, who is SA Pathology's clinical director,
said levels of VRE had been worsening because it was so highly contagious and
the only way to slow the "epidemic" was by putting people in single
rooms.
"This is certainly a very sticky organism that contaminates
the environment (rather than just being spread from person to person)," he
said. "You only have to be in the same room as someone to pick it up.
"The architecture of hospitals just does not lend itself to
infection control," Professor Turnidge said. "The ideal hospital has
all single rooms. That's the standard for the future."
When asked whether the promised single rooms at the proposed new
RAH would help control the spread, he said patients would have to be
quarantined once they were moved. "They'll bring it with them," he
said.
"When you've got a greenfields site, you'll assume everyone
from the old hospital has it.
"The challenge is to have enough single rooms to do
that."
The Advertiser can reveal that a conference brief from the RAH's
Infection Prevention and Control Unit, produced in October last year, warned
the largest-ever outbreak of VRE had hit the state. The unit blamed the design
of the "old hospital" and inadequate cleaning.
"Since January, 2008, 147 patients at the RAH have been
detected with (the bacteria) in their stool," the unit's experts wrote.
"Although the majority are (relatively harmless) faecal
colonisation, there have been six potentially life-threatening infections,
including four bloodstream infections and two deep abscesses."
They warned most units in the hospital were affected.
"Attempts to eradicate VRE have been hampered by the physical design of an
old hospital with few single rooms and inadequate ablution facilities and the
median three-day turnaround time for results of surveillance swabs."
The bug "colonises" the gut and is harmless in healthy
people, but is dangerous in people with compromised immune systems, such as
cancer patients.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister John Hill said steps had been
taken to minimise the risk of VRE cross-infection.
"Currently, the majority of patients in the RAH are
accommodated within multi-bed bays, with shared bathroom facilities and little
opportunity for optimum infection control," the spokeswoman said.
"The new RAH will dramatically increase the number of
single rooms, showers and toilets, providing patients with not only privacy and
dignity, but also less risk of picking up infections during their stay."
SA Health's Central Northern Adelaide Health Service executive
director Lesley Dwyer said there were increased levels of VRE at the RAH, so
increased infection-control measures had been implemented.
The Australian Medical Association blamed the overuse of
antibiotics for creating the superbugs.
((C) Copyright Nationwide News Pty Limited)
