Hospital superbugs like MRSA are here to stay
Pastor Dale Morgan
Hospital superbugs like MRSA are here to stay*
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Last Updated: 12:14PM BST 21/05/2008
Hospital superbugs will always be a problem and it is impossible to
eliminate them completely, a Government scientist has admitted.
Prof Peter Borriello, director of the centre for infections at the
Health Protection Agency, said efforts will continue to reduce hospital
infections to the absolute minimum but they will not be beaten.
He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “People will always have to expect
some level of hospital acquired infection. It is not possible never to
have a hospital acquired infection. That doesn’t happen anywhere in the
world and never did in the past.”
But he added that it does not mean clinicians are giving up trying to
reduce infections.
One in nine patients admitted to hospital contract an infection during
their stay. The most lethal include MRSA which is resistant to almost
all antibiotics and Clostridium difficile which take hold in the gut
after a course of antibiotics, especially in the elderly.
Organisms are emerging all the time that are resistant to drugs used to
treat them because all the others have already been killed off.
Experts warn this process will not stop but work is under way to target
drugs and vaccines at the parts of the organism that does not alter as
it evolves to develop resistance to treatment.
Handwashing campaigns and the deep cleaning of hospitals are important
to reduce the risk of catching an infection from the hospital
environment, Prof Boriello said, but they may not have a major impact on
bugs like MRSA which get into the bloodstream via vital tubes and
intravenous lines used to save lives.
There are around 50,000 cases of C.diff in England’s hospitals each year
and latest figures show cases are levelling off.
The rise in MRSA is also showing signs of levelling off and there were
around 5,000 cases of bloodstream infections 2007. It is not known how
many cases there are of MRSA infection of surgical wound sites as this
is not collected.
Earlier this month scientists warned of an emerging superbug called
Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, or Steno for short.
There were around 1,000 cases of Steno bloodstream infection last year
and 300 patients died.
Some strains of Steno have been found to be resistant to all drugs but
so far there has been no recorded cases in the UK.
Dr Matthew Avison, from Bristol University, has been working on the bug
and said it would be 'very worrying’ if the completely resistant strain
began appearing in British hospitals.