
To avoid
the world coming under threat from untreatable infections, more focus on the
management of the environment is essential claims a leading expert. Superbugs
are becoming more resistant to the current portfolio of antibiotics and
investment in developing new drugs has been scaled back. Minimising the risk of
pathogen transfer from healthcare surroundings to the patient needs to be a key
focus to help prevent unwanted infections.
The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) announced
yesterday that in some countries up to 50 per cent of cases of blood poisoning
caused by one bug (
Klebsiella pneumoniae, a common cause of urinary and
respiratory conditions) were resistant to carbapenems, the most powerful class
of antibiotics.
Across Europe, the percentage of carbapenem-resistant
K. pneumoniae has
doubled from 7 per cent to 15 per cent. The ECDC said it is "particularly
worrying" because carbapenems are the last-line antibiotics for treatment
of multi-drug-resistant infections.
Focus
has centred on the over prescribing of antibiotics having led to this global
problem. Guidance aimed at reducing the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals has
already been published by the Department of Health. They want healthcare
practitioners to avoid long treatment and to replace broad-spectrum antibiotics
with those targeted at the specific infection.
Commenting
on the requests for better antibiotic control, James Salkeld head of healthcare
at leading bio-decontamination experts, Bioquell said, "The calls for
antimicrobial stewardship and increased research into antibiotics are welcome,
although they only address part of the problem. The advent of untreatable
pathogens has raised the stakes, and should bring about a genuine move to zero
tolerance infection control policies, including hand hygiene and
decontamination of the patient surroundings. These Gram-negative bacteria have
been shown to persist in the environment even after multiple rounds of manual
cleaning, calling for automated no touch decontamination technologies to be
used."
Latest
research presented at the Conference of the Infectious Disease Society of
America in October 2011 described two uses of no touch decontamination to
combat Gram-negatives. The first described an intervention using automated
hydrogen peroxide vapour (HPV) to eliminate a particularly virulent pathogen
(NDM-1
K. pneumoniae) from a hospital environment, preventing further
acquisition. The second study, performed over six years, showed that only by
implementing (HPV) decontamination was a leading US hospital able to prevent
infections from Gram-negative bacteria. Before this treatment, several
intervention approaches had been implemented, but it was the implementation of
a coordinated room bio-decontamination process using Bioquell HPV that finally
led to the stopping of outbreaks and ongoing infections.
For more information visit
www.bioquell.com