PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM SUPERBUGS IN AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC HOSPITALS BUT OFFICIALDOM IS UNCONCERNED

It's one way to get people off those embarrassing waiting lists, I guess

Hospital patients are dying from superbugs because Australian health authorities are mishandling the crisis, Australia's peak body for surgeons said today. Superbugs were endemic to every hospital in Australia and would spread further unless authorities changed their approach to infection control, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons said. The common superbug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a strain of golden staph, is resistant to most prescribed antibiotics.

Australians should be very concerned about the death rate from hospital superbugs, as the nation was lagging behind international best practice in combating infection, the college's infection control committee head Professor Richard West said. His comments come after the Victorian Department of Human Services released figures earlier this week showing an outbreak of the killer superbug was linked to 123 patient deaths in the past 12 months. The figures, from June 2004 to May 2005, showed that MRSA had been found in more than 30 hospitals, and had infected more than 1,600 people.

But the Victorian Government played down concerns this week, saying only a small number of those who died did so as a result of catching the bug, while the rest were infected with the bug but died of other causes. Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike was confident hygiene measures in Victorian hospitals were sufficient to combat the bug, which she said was "part of the natural world".

Professor West said today he was "astounded" by how lightly the latest problem had been taken by Victorian health authorities. "To say that these bugs are part of the natural world is rubbish," he said. "Other countries are doing much better in controlling the superbug than we are. "Experience in northern Europe has shown that with a more stringent policy, it is possible to get much lower rates of MRSA infection." The policy in other countries of isolating the organism and destroying it in the environment, along with measures to decontaminate staff, were "much more effective" than Australian procedures.

Professor West said Australia should direct more resources towards infection control. The measures should include the adoption of a national database to record and monitor MRSA, he said. Better education of health workers, the implementation of better handwashing routines, the adoption of a policy of searching and destroying the organism, and better-designed healthcare facilities that allowed infected patients to be nursed in an appropriate environment, were also needed.

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here, the mirror site may be more up to date. My Home Page is here or here.

***************************