'Nightmare' Superbug May Have Spread Outside Hospitals

a reply to: grey580

yup - if in doubt " go full pappa smurf "

So it's difficult. We need an alarm when it becomes impossible.

originally posted by: reldra

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
a reply to: Krakatoa

Fear not.

A vaccine will soon be coming to a pharmacy near you.

Some are a Big Pharma ploy and some are not. I actually HOPE this one is. But it is not looking that way.

I have to agree with you on this one Reldra. I think this bug is real and a real threat. I've been watching this one since I started writing about diseases three years ago and I've been waiting for it to jump ship from the health care facilities. There's been no new antibiotics in the pipeline over recent years because there hasn't been money in it, but this disease is serious enough to get some attention now from Big Pharma, which will result in some big profits for them if it does become an outbreak. Unintended benefit for whichever does come up with the first antibiotic to stop this disease. This CRE has been slowly gaining ground for more than 15 years now and it's still rather slow on the "outbreak" scale, but it does have the health care industry pretty concerned and that's why there will be a race to develop an antibiotic for it. If it were another Big Pharma ploy, I don't think it would have been confined in rather small numbers to nursing homes for so long.

a reply to: Krakatoa

Could it be that these people all unknowingly came into contact with someone who HAS recently spent time in a medical facility, or someone who has been given invasive treatment?

I mean, the idea that something like CRE is just going to die the moment a patient gets discharged, is somewhat ridiculous, is it not?

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Krakatoa

Could it be that these people all unknowingly came into contact with someone who HAS recently spent time in a medical facility, or someone who has been given invasive treatment?

I mean, the idea that something like CRE is just going to die the moment a patient gets discharged, is somewhat ridiculous, is it not?

Then the medical facility from which they were discharged was negligent in letting that bug out of their facility. This is not a bug to take lightly. This bacterium can only get worse the more exposure it has outside of a controlled medical facility. See, bacterium, they can survive longer than virii "in the wild".

How long do bacteria and viruses live outside the body?

a reply to: Krakatoa

Surely.

However, practically speaking, unless the hospital is going to turn itself into a self contained quarantine zone, with airlocks, decontamination stations and what have you, at every single entrance and exit point, then there was ALWAYS going to be the risk of this, and a thousand other nasties we do not want to think about, making their way from the ward to the street.

Its amazing its been contained as long as it has!

a reply to: Krakatoa

The whole point of highly resistant strain of bacteria is to be...highly resistant.

Hospitals have 1000s of people going through every ward everyday with the bacteria latching onto every surface being carried around by healthy people who are immune to the bacteria because of no compromised immune system.

A MRSA strain can latch onto a hospital curtain and stay alive for more then a 3 week to more then months period.

Unless you plan on dropping a thermite explosive onto the hospital to level it, there is no way to be able to contain it and also provide emergency and normal health care at the same time.

The link of the amount of people who have come into contact with that person from the moment they came into that door is staggering, and then it webs out even further to the people who come into contact with those original people and so on and so on.

Do not make claims until you have worked in a hospital, medical facility or similar and have had to experience a fully loaded hospital on a weekend for a 24hour period, being on the internet is great at reading, going and being in that zone is another matter.