Last week Digital Journal reported that new evidence suggested that drug-resistant bacteria have spread in a Los Angeles hospital as the result of contaminated endoscopes. Here, Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infected at least seven patients (two of whom died) at California’s Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
Now, similar issues and pathogenic bacterial outbreaks in other U.S. states are coming to light. This is according to a report in Bloomberg Business.
By way of example, six years ago, 15 patients died and another 70 were sickened in Florida. This was due to an outbreak similar to the one that occurred at the UCLA Medical Center. To add to this, similar “superbug” cases have occurred in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin in recent years. Each case was tied to exposure to a certain type of endoscope. More troubling for those interested in “open government”, Bloomberg notes that none of these cases was made public at the time.
The news agency notes: “States have a haphazard approach to tracking the infections. Only about half of the 44 state health departments that responded to questions from Bloomberg said they require hospitals and labs to report individual cases of CRE.”
Commenting on these revelations, Lawrence Muscarella, the president of LFM Healthcare Solutions, who tracks endoscope re-use issues, told Al Jazeera America said: “I am speechless when it comes to this.”
The scientist added: “When a medical device or drug is being used is harming people and it’s risen to the level that it has today, action needs to be done. Ideally, action should have been done yesterday. It should have been done two years ago. I can’t explain to you why it hasn’t been done.”
Others are calling upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to undertake a review of cleaning and disinfection procedures relating to medical devices.
