February 9, 2005
CBC News
TORONTO - A hard-to-detect form of a superbug keeps popping up at Toronto hospitals, raising fears that the antibiotic-resistant infections could soar in health-care institutions across the country if it isn't stopped.
Health-care workers find it hard to detect this particular strain of Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci because it doesn't resemble more common VRE in laboratory tests.
That's let the bug elude hospital screening programs to start outbreaks within at least four hospitals and two long-term care facilities in the Toronto area.
The microbe hasn't been spotted outside the region, but infection-control experts warn that its spread is inevitable if they don't curb it soon.
"It is definitely an issue of concern," Dr. Andrew Simor, head of microbiology at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, told the Canadian Press on Tuesday.
"That is a distinct possibility."
A few patients at Sunnybrook caught the infection last fall, but staff believe they've got rid of the VRE strain at their hospital.
VRE is resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin and can cause infections in the urinary tract, bloodstream and surgical wounds. It can dangerously weaken patients who are already seriously ill, such those undergoing chemotherapy.
To combat the infection, health-care institutions need to screen incoming patients who are at high risk and isolate people who are carrying or infected with the bug.
Infected patients can be treated with combinations of other antibiotics, but carriers who might elude detection can carry and spread it indefinitely.
In January, an outbreak of VRE at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver forced staff to shut down one ward.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/02/08/superbug-050208.html