Preventing almost 40000 ‘superbug’ deaths requires teamwork, CDC says

So far, “independent, institution-based efforts to prevent transmission have been inadequate”, the researchers wrote in the study, published this week in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “Health care facilities and public health departments need to work as a team”.

They could, for example, keep almost 20,000 people in Orange County from falling ill over a 15-year period from a bacteria known commonly as CRE, a team of UC Irvine researchers working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found.

Efforts are being made by hospitals and nursing homes to carry out work independently in order to prevent outbreaks of fatal superbugs. The self-reliant approach, according to CDC, will not work and would worsen the infections, and deaths may be a result.

In 2011, there were 310,000 cases of infection in the United States from four types of nasty bacteria that are usually acquired in hospitals: carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile.

The first line of treatment is antibiotics, drugs designed to kill bacteria. However, they hardly communicate with each other when patients are transferred who might be infected with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

These combined efforts could prevent more than half a million new infections, according to CBS news.

The report also includes computer models. “Optimizing implementation of basic infection control practice within individual facilities will be of fundamental importance to this effort”, CDC said.

Patients can do their part washing their hands, asking healthcare providers to do the same and by informing doctor about previous infections that required hospitalization. With these in mind, Dr John Jernigan, director of the Office of HAI Prevention Research and Evaluation of the CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion suggests hospitals, nursing homes and health authorities to “think as a community when it comes to combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria”.

The proposed antimicrobial stewardship will help doctors to use the right kind of antibiotics, at the right dose, for the right reason, according to Dr Jesse T. Jacob, assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine. “It’s a big problem now”. In addition, CDC estimated that 619,00 health care-associated and C. difficile infections and 37,000 deaths could be averted in 5 years, with an estimated $7.7 billion in direct medical costs saved. He reiterated: “We are low in resources to roll (these changes) out rapidly”.