Super Bug kills mother in hospital with ear infection
Pastor Dale Morgan
Super Bug kills mother in hospital with ear infection*
By Nick Britten
Last Updated: 2:14AM BST 03/05/2008
UK - The family of a 39-year-old mother has spoken out after she was
admitted to hospital with an ear infection, then died after contracting
the MRSA Super Bug
Shakuntala Pancholi, a civil servant, had developed the infection after
routine surgery.
She was admitted to hospital but died from multi-organ failure 16 days
later.
An inquest earlier this week ruled that she died of natural causes and
yesterday her husband Suresh, 51, said: "She went into hospital with an
ear infection, which is not life-threatening and then suddenly she is in
a critical condition."
The inquest heard that Mrs Pancholi was admitted to Leicester Royal
Infirmary in September 2004 suffering from an ear infection caught after
an operation to repair a perforated eardrum.
MRSA was detected and she was given antibiotics. After a week she was
sent home but her condition deteriorated and she was admitted to
Leicester General Hospital, where she died four days later.
Martin Symington, the Leicester coroner, recorded a verdict of death by
natural causes after a post-mortem examination found Mrs Pancholi, from
Leicester, died from multi-organ failure caused by an infection.
A spokesman for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said there
were "lessons that we must learn from this and things we need to do to
make sure this does not happen again. Our thoughts are with Mrs
Pancholi's family".
Latest figures from the Health Protection Agency show that the fight
against MRSA in England appeared to have come to a standstill.
Data for October to December last year showed that 1,087 cases of MRSA
bloodstream infections were reported. This is a slight increase on the
previous quarter, when 1,080 reports were received.
The figures suggest that the Department of Health is struggling to
combat infection rates and is unlikely to meet the pledge made in 2004
to halve the number of MRSA infections within four years. To meet that
target it would have to cut the rate to 963 for the first quarter of
this year.
Dr Georgia Duckworth, head of healthcare-associated infection and
antimicrobial resistance at the HPA, said that, in general, MRSA cases
had been falling over the past year.
Nurses this week blamed sloppy hygiene practices by contract cleaners
for spreading MRSA and other hospital acquired infections such as C-Diff
and demanded that the Government take action against them.
Last year Gordon Brown announced that all 169 hospital trusts in England
would undergo a "deep clean" to rid them of infections. The programme
was due to be finished by March but has not yet been completed.
Infection rates for the period between May and August this year will
show how much of a success the initiative has been.
Last month the Countess of Chester Hospital Foundation Trust was hit by
an outbreak of C-Diff only four days after undergoing a £300,000 clean
up. At least 26 people were affected and wards were closed.
It emerged that hundreds of trusts are allowing doctors and nurses to
treat patients even after they have tested positive for MRSA and other
potentially lethal superbugs, with no systems in place to automatically
remove staff from wards if they are found to be carrying an infection.