Ohio - Pigs - C.Diff
- From: "Pat Gardiner" <patgardiner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:23:51 +0100
Pat's Note: Yet another pig production area, known to have had PMWS -
Circovirus and now with a human C.Diff epidemic - and a bit of a cover-up
too.
The co-incidences are too frequent. It is the same pattern every time. The
timing is consistant with the importation of the new virulent strain of PMWS
from England and a sudden appearance of a C.Diff epidemic.
It is exactly the same tale as we are hearing in Britain, right down to the
government refusing to test the pigs. There are even reports which look like
animal rights mistaking illness in piglets for cruelty.
This can't be just co-incidemce.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1209457828148340.xml&coll=2
C. diff infections on the rise in Ohio hospitals and around the country
Report: Government isn't doing enough
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Harlan Spector
Plain Dealer Reporter
For months after she left the hospital in June 2004, 83-year-old Annie Lee
Peterson suffered chronic diarrhea and intestinal pain. She had become too
weak to climb steps.
Doctors finally diagnosed the Copley Township woman with "C. diff" -
shorthand for the infectious bacteria Clostridium difficile, which
circulates in hospitals and nursing homes.
"Treatment brought it under control, but she was so weak she never got back
to where she was before," said her daughter, Hilary Peterson of Solon. Her
mother died a year later.
She was among a growing number of patients sickened by C. diff in recent
years. A new government report says the intestinal infections in hospitals
more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, when 301,200 patients were
diagnosed with C. diff-related disease. The report confirms that C. diff is
among the worst new germ threats in the United States.
Infected patients, who were mostly elderly, were hospitalized three times
longer than the average hospital stay, and they died at a rate 4.5 times
higher than average, said the report by the Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality.
The surge in cases may be of little surprise in Ohio. A virulent strain of
C. diff that spread in Europe and North America was confirmed in Cleveland
hospitals in 2005. The state that year became the first to order hospitals
and nursing homes to report cases, after The Plain Dealer reported that
state health officials had failed to act on growing evidence of outbreaks. A
year of reporting turned up 15,000 infections in Ohio health-care
facilities.
The intestinal bug has long been a common cause of diarrhea in hospitals.
It's associated with antibiotic use because antibiotics wipe out protective
bacteria in the colon. But the superstrain of C. diff appears to spread more
rapidly and causes more devastating illness. The government report said that
in 2005, the infections caused life-threatening colon disease that required
partial or complete removal of colons in about 1,100 patients. These
complications had been unheard of before.
Hospitals say they practice prevention, including isolating infected
patients and cleaning surfaces with bleach, which kills spores that protect
the bacteria. Hospitals say they also stepped up requirements for staff
hand-washing with soap and water.
But the precautions have not made significant dents in infection rates,
officials at two local hospitals said Monday.
A Government Accountability Office report earlier this month said the
federal government is not doing enough to force hospitals to reduce
infections.
Betsy McCaughey, who heads the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths
(hospitalinfection.org), a New York nonprofit agency, said hospitals don't
do enough cleaning. C. diff spores cling to floors, bed rails, sinks and
medical equipment, and they spread hand to mouth after a patient touches a
contaminated object.
"The most important step for patients is to continually clean their hands,"
said McCaughey.
Dr. Steven Gordon, chairman of infectious diseases at the Cleveland Clinic,
said the science is unclear on which avenues of germ transmission play a
role in C. diff infection rates
Ohio's reporting requirement for C. diff infections expired after 2006. But
a Health Department infection-control panel has recommended that mandatory
reporting resume for hospitals.
That would start in October 2009 at the earliest, if Health Director Dr.
Alvin Jackson accepts the proposal, a department spokesman said.
Hilary Peterson said she hopes the public is better informed than she was,
when she shuttled her mother to doctors and emergency rooms trying to
understand the cause of her intestinal distress.
"We didn't know about C. diff until later on. If we'd known, we might have
asked more questions. But we learned."
--
--
Regards
Pat Gardiner
Release the results of testing British pigs for MRSA now!
and test for C.Diff.
www.go-self-sufficient.com
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