Surge in the number of cases of terrifying hospital superbug after NHS relaxes hygiene rules (UK)

Mail on Sunday (UK) ^ | 02:22 EST, 27 September 2015 | Stephen Adams

[Olog-hai]

The number of cases of a terrifying superbug in NHS hospitals has surged after the Government ignored warnings—and relaxed the rules on fighting infections.

Hundreds more patients fell ill with deadly Clostridium difficile—known as C.diff—between April 2014 and March 2015 than in the previous year.

The increase, from 13,361 to 14,165, came immediately after the system for fining hospitals with too many cases was dramatically weakened. …

[HiTech RedNeck]

One obvious hypothesis is that the hospitals actually did get more careless, but there seems to be too little here to rule out other factors such as less-than-honesty in prior reporting and perverse incentives such as to shuffle such cases out of the hospitals altogether. And that is always a risk in a system that is under pressure in illogical ways.

[Tax-chick]

Those are good points. There’s also the possibility that there was a proportional increase in the number of patients.

[BobL]

Doesn’t matter, the Europeans will NEVER LEARN that ‘multiculturalism’ is a DISASTER.

[heye2monn]

[[”One obvious hypothesis is that the [British] hospitals actually did get more careless”]]

Another obvious hypothesis is that socialism, beginning in the Soviet Union and continuing at full speed in the Great Britain medical system, always creates scarcities and painful,early deaths.

We “free-market” Americans cannot brag too much however. Our own little gulag of socialism, the Veterans Administration, features a nightmare a day. And patients are already lining up for the utopia of the future, Obamacare.

[left that other site]

Check the demographics on the hospital staff, and then do a search on “Handwashing after using the toilet=haram”

[elcid1970]

Muslimah nurses in NHS hospitals no longer have to bare their arms up to the elbow when scrubbing prior to patient contact.

It’s offensive to Islam, don’t you know.

Add that to the stat that NHS employees in general only wash up 40% of the time that they are required to, before handling patients.

Isn’t socialized healthcare wonderful?

[null and void]

It’s enough to drive a man mad.

Ignaz Semmelweis is rolling in his grave.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

C. difficile can flourish when other bacteria in the gut are killed during antibiotic therapy. However, they live there *naturally*, so blaming external contamination will not help the situation.

What *is* needed is the *careful* use of antibiotics to prevent them from creating the conditions in which C. difficile can bloom. Oddly enough, what this means is that there is a literal “space race” between gut bacteria, and the *only* reason drug resistant bacteria can have a bloom is when the healthy bacteria have been harmed.

In past, hospitals hit with an outbreak of C. difficile have been able to fix the problem just by putting controls over the prescribing of antibiotics by their doctors.

In practical terms, many physicians are now recommending that when their patients take antibiotics, that between times they consume *live culture* “probiotics”, such as yoghurt or kefir, to replace their depleted healthy bacteria. If you or those your love are getting antibiotics, please tell them to ask their doctors about taking probiotics in between times.

Antibiotics most closely associated with permitting a C. difficile bloom:

Cephalosporins, such as cefixime (Suprax) and cefpodoxime.

Clindamycin (Cleocin)

Penicillins, such as amoxicillin (Amoxil, Larotid, others) and ampicillin.

Fluoroquinolones, such as ciprofloxacin (Cipro) and levofloxacin (Levaquin)

Sometimes associated:

Macrolides

Trimethoprim

Sulfonamides

Importantly, for some time now, C. butyricum MIYAIRI 588 strain has been marketed in Japan, Korea, and China for C. difficile prophylaxis due to its reported ability to interfere with the growth of the latter.

This makes sense, as it is a non-pathogenic relative of C. difficile, “eats the same stuff” as C. difficile, and its waste products are also the waste products toxic to C. difficile.

[spokeshave]

All new hospital building in US is going to single bed units...older ones are being converted....reason is to stop cross infections spreading....

Meanwhile in gobmint National Health operated in UK, wards look like Florence Nightingale era:

and from a previous FR posting:

Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 06 Oct 2012 | Laura Donnelly

Posted on 10/6/2012, 10:38:35 PM by Mount Athos

Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today.

The death toll was disclosed by the Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards.

* as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals;

* there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals;

* 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a further 650 people who died had their presence noted on their death certificates;

The records, from the Office for National Statistics, follow a series of scandals of care of the elderly, with doctors forced to prescribe patients with drinking water or put them on drips to make sure they do not become severely dehydrated .

More at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2941388/posts

and the "nurses" are like this:

Welcome to Obamacare.

[bgill]

Check the demographics on the hospital staff, and then do a search on “Handwashing after using the toilet=haram”

And the patients. Although I once had a white doctor come out of the restroom zipping up.

What's going on with the NHS to relax instead of raise the bar? There is no excuse for that decision.

[left that other site]

No Excuse...

except “Political Correctness” which even trumps hygiene.