Infections caused by a highly drug-resistant superbug are on the rise again at Mater Dei Hospital, with two patients a day being infected or identified as carriers, according to data gathered by the hospital’s infection control department.

The incidence of the potentially deadly and contagious bacterium klebsiella pneumoniae is not as high as a 2011 outbreak, but data shows a spike during the last quarter of 2014, especially in intensive care.

“If MRSA was a superbug, this is a super-superbug,” head of the infection control department Michael Borg explained.

“It’s a problem across the world but in the Mediterranean it is more problematic than in other regions such as, say, Scandinavia.

“It is very difficult to treat because it is extremely resistant to antibiotics. The most important thing is to avoid it through the same method used for MRSA – good hand hygiene, use of alcohol rubs and proper antibiotics use.”

Dr Borg’s team has just been given the Hand Hygiene Excellence Award 2015 by the University Hospitals of Geneva, which is a World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborating centre on patient safety.
Through intensive hand hygiene campaigns, training, education and audits of practices, the team has helped to drastically slash MRSA blood infections from three patients every two weeks in 2009 to one patient a month. This was a major positive outcome, especially in view of the fact that Malta has one of the highest rates of MRSA carriers in the world.

 

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