‘Nightmare’ bacteria spreading in U.S. hospitals, nursing homes: CDC

Healthy Living – by Steven Reinberg

(HealthDay News) — A “nightmare” bacteria that is resistant to powerful antibiotics and kills half of those it infects has surfaced in nearly 200 U.S. hospitals and nursing homes, federal health officials reported Tuesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 4 percent of U.S. hospitals and 18 percent of nursing homes had treated at least one patient with the bacteria, called Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), within the first six months of 2012.

“CRE are nightmare bacteria. Our strongest antibiotics don’t work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news release. “Doctors, hospital leaders and public health [officials] must work together now to implement the CDC’s ‘detect and protect’ strategy and stop these infections from spreading.”

“The good news,” Frieden added at an afternoon teleconference, “is we now have an opportunity to prevent its further spread.” But, he continued, “We only have a limited window of opportunity to stop this infection from spreading to the community and spreading to more organisms.”

CRE are in a family of more than 70 bacteria called enterobacteriaceae, including Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli, that normally live in the digestive system.

In recent years, some of these bacteria have become resistant to last-resort antibiotics known as carbapenems.

Although CRE bacteria are not yet found nationwide, they have increased fourfold within the United States in the past decade, with most cases reported in the Northeast.

Health officials said they’re concerned about the rapid spread of the bacteria, which can endanger the lives of patients and healthy people. For example, in the last 10 years, the CDC tracked one CRE from one health-care facility to similar facilities in 42 states.

One type of CRE, a resistant form of Klebsiella pneumoniae, has increased sevenfold in the past decade, according to the CDC’s March 5 Vital Signs report.

“To see bacteria that are resistant is worrisome, because this group of bacteria are very common,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Most CRE infections to date have been in patients who had prolonged stays in hospitals, long-term facilities and nursing homes, the report said.

The bacteria kill up to half the patients whose bloodstream gets infected and are easily spread from patient to patient on the hands of health-care workers, the CDC said.

Moreover, CRE bacteria can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria of the same type.

This problem is the result of the overuse of antibiotics, Siegel said. “The more you use an antibiotic, the more resistance is going to emerge,” he said. “This is an indictment of the overuse of this class of antibiotic.”

What’s needed are new antibiotics, Siegel said, adding that pharmaceutical companies lack the financial motivation to develop them right now. “Eventually, there will be enough resistance so drug companies will have a financial incentive. In the meantime, lives can be lost,” he said.

Added Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York: “At this time, our best prevention is detection and infection control. The incidence [of CRE] is low and we are looking to prevent it before it gets much higher and we cannot control it.”

To beat back the spread of these bacteria, the CDC wants hospitals and other health-care facilities to take the following steps:

  • Enforce infection-control precautions.
  • Group together patients with CRE.
  • Segregate staff, rooms and equipment to patients with CRE.
  • Tell facilities when patients with CRE are transferred.
  • Use antibiotics carefully.

Additional funding of research and technology is critical to prevent and quickly identify CRE, the CDC said.

Countries where CRE is more common have had some success controlling it.

Israel, for example, worked to reduce CRE in its 27 hospitals, and CRE rates dropped by more than 70 percent. Some U.S. facilities and states have also seen similar reductions, the agency said.

“We have seen in outbreak after outbreak that when facilities and regions follow the CDC’s prevention guidelines, CRE can be controlled and even stopped,” Dr. Michael Bell, acting director of the CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, said in the news release. “As trusted health-care providers, it is our responsibility to prevent further spread of these deadly bacteria.”

Siegel said there are measures patients can take to reduce their risk of infection. “No. 1 on the list is [not to] wish that your hospital stay is extended. Patients think they are safer at the hospital, but that may not be true,” he said. “And try to go into a clean hospital.”

Patients should also make sure doctors and staff wear gloves and wash their hands when treating them, he said.

http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/nightmare-bacteria-spreading-in-us-hospitals-nursing-homes-cdc-1

5 thoughts on “‘Nightmare’ bacteria spreading in U.S. hospitals, nursing homes: CDC

  1. Does anyone suspect the flu shot spreading this or being the start of this? There are antibiotics in those shots as well.

  2. I wonder how long it took the CDC to create this new bacteria? Hopefully it will wipe out a few thousand sadistic doctors.

  3. Must take an awful lot of time and money to come up with something that EVERY antibiotic is totally ineffective against.

    That’s progress for you.

  4. “What’s needed are new antibiotics, Siegel said, adding that pharmaceutical companies lack the financial motivation to develop them right now. “Eventually, there will be enough resistance so drug companies will have a financial incentive. In the meantime, lives can be lost,” he said.”

    HAHAHA!!! Pure proof of pharmaceutical financial greed rather than doing what is necessary to save a life. It’s all about the money. Reminds me of Chinese hospitals. All the doctors, including the hospital itself wants a piece of the pie before giving you aid. Money first, morality later is the Chinese motto.

    Let me tell you a true story. My wife’s aunt in China has cancer and needs a certain type of blood that is hard to find. So the doctors tell her husband that unless he finds the blood, she will die in a few months. So my wife’s uncle goes out desperately to find someone with her rare blood type. Now that is not hard to do, being that there are over a billion people in China. However, being that it is China, everyone wants a price for something. So he had to find someone who was willing to give blood for a price, not out of the kindness of their heart. (Chinese people for ya). So after finally finding someone and paying them and getting a few bags of blood, he returns to the hospital to give it to the doctors. The doctors look at him in shock because they never believed anyone would actually do it. So what do the doctors do in order to help his wife? They say that they will only give one bag of blood to his wife, as long as they get to keep the remaining blood for the hospital, even though she needs all of the bags. They then tell him that it is actually illegal for him to go out and get blood on his own and that they won’t say anything as long as they make that deal. So her uncle had no choice.

    This is the kind of shit you will see happen in the U.S. soon. This is the kind of Communist, inhumane, psychotic world that will come to the U.S. if the Chinese come and buy us out.

    What JD said on Henry’s show today was right. Chinese businessmen are ruthless, uncivilized and care nothing about anyone or anything but themselves and their money. That’s it! It’s ALL about the selfish, ME FIRST, YOU SECOND, mentality. It’s ALL about the money with them. The sooner you get that through your heads, the easier it will be to deal with them. They are the trickiest, sleaziest, low-life, scum of businessmen you will ever meet. I have worked in China and I can say that a yearly contract means nothing to them because by the end of the 3rd month, they will have broken the contract 6 times already and will find ways of blackmailing you to stay, all while holding a smile on their face and being nice to you. Korea is the same way. Ask any ESL teacher. They NEVER EVER honor their contract and look for ways of getting teachers to quit before the end of their contract so they don’t have to pay them their yearly bonuses so they could save their business money. It’s all about them. NOT you. They care nothing for you. It’s all about giving them money and leaving you out to dry, which is exactly what they are doing in our country.

    Hell, from my true story that I just told you, the Chinese even cheat their own people and that’s what pisses my wife off the most. She always says, my people always look up to foreigners (basically to use them and learn from them in order to deceive them in the long run) but look down on their own people. It’s sick and disgusting. It really is.

    If things don’t change soon and if we don’t get our country back, you will be looking at a world-wide version of this. Be prepared people.

  5. I too fear this is another micro biological engineered attempt to eliminate the old and weak…as with all these new designer diseases. Many, if not all of todays maladies are basically covering up criminal medical protocols..from mammograms to vaccinations. SARS, Avian Flu, Spanish flu…SIDS, Shaking Baby Syndrome…check out dead scientists…http://www.stevequayle.com/index.php?s=146

    Eugenics is alive and well and doing a great business…thanks to people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Clarence Gamble and so on…and let’s not forget the prince of poison, the man the call Mr. Poison, Donald Rumsfeld, with his genetically modified e coli bacteria that just happens to taste sweet called aspartame. Can you say neurological diseases? As we all know, the FDA is not there to protect us, but to protect them. And the CDC, AMA and practically everyone of their allopathic organizations, are nothing but corrupt sociopaths, selling false research and junk science and basically there to protect profits, territory and to cover up their medical crimes.

    They allow mercury, MSG, nitrates, irradiation, chemicals, pesticides, fire retardant, formaldehyde, fluoride to be consumed, knowing the harmful effects…
    they feed arsenic to chickens and the chicken poop to the cows where the moms feed their kids on this crap and then everyone eats this crap at McCrap and then their brains don’t work because they watch too much cartoons or Dancing with the Stars, after eating giant bowls of ice cream full of anti freeze, so it sits on the shelf longer and probably will wash it down with a Mountain Dew, which is technically unsafe to drink, making bad brains even more bad…and then throw in a public education, designed and dedicated to making idiots, because people aren’t born idiots, they are made into idiots and we have too many idiots right now who need to unplug from the matrix, detox and join humanity.

    Stay away from hospitals and doctors. They are trained, not educated. If you need to see a doctor, see a naturopath. They will fix anything without the toxins and side effects. Stay away from vaccinations, fluoride and processed foods. Eliminate sugar, bread and dairy. Get in shape and exercise if you can.

    Many diseases start with the digestive system. GMO foods are compromising people’s gut flora/good bacteria in their stomach causing leaky gut syndrome, leading to pathogens to get into the blood. They know this. They also know that fear creates insomnia, which hurries the process. The body doesn’t know the difference between a lion walking into the village and not making enough money to pay the bills…constant state of fear causes chronic inflammation.
    The pineal gland becomes calcified and rendered useless by fluoride. Anyone interested in learning about the pineal gland go here http://crystalcleandrinkingwater.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-connection-between-pineal-gland.html

    remember ICELAND…if they can do it, so can we.

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