"The overuse of antibiotics — long blamed for the emergence of drug-resistant, disease-causing bacteria — is also being implicated for lowering bodily defences in susceptible people, such as the extremely sick or elderly.
Headlines about outbreaks of Clostridium difficile, a common infection in health-care facilities that has proven increasingly deadly due to new, more resistant, virulent strains of the bacteria, have become almost routine in Canada every year.
Four patients died in an outbreak in Cape Breton earlier this year. Similar outbreaks in Quebec in recent years have killed hundreds.
Now, Ontario hospitals are trying to cope with a series of outbreaks of the C. difficile superbug that have resulted, so far, in more than a dozen deaths.
One problem in combating outbreaks of the highly contagious C. difficile has been less than optimal adherence to good hygiene practices in health-care facilities, particularly among some groups of doctors.
But while there’s been so much emphasis on improving rates of handwashing and other hygiene measures, which have got better, experts say a key factor leading to some deaths — the over-prescribing of antibiotics for very ill or elderly patients that lowers their resistance to C. difficile — needs more attention.
The knowledge that overuse of antibiotics can leave certain patients more vulnerable to some infections isn’t new.
But with strains of common bugs like C. difficile becoming tougher to treat — ironically, also due to the longtime, general overuse of antibiotics in society — what’s needed, say experts like Andrew Morris, director of the joint antimicrobial stewardship program at the University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital in Ontario, is for doctors to cut back on antibiotic prescriptions.
That’s sound advice. Overuse of antibiotics has already spawned virtually untreatable strains of several deadly infectious agents. We know the elderly and very ill can be stripped of their already weakened internal defences, in the form of good bacteria, by antibiotics.
Yes, there has to be a balance. Antibiotics obviously must still play an important role in health-care treatment. But we believe experts like Morris are essentially right. The overuse of antibiotics — which, to be fair, there have been efforts to control — must end."
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Hmm... but when George Smitherman was hiding his Liberal healthcare monopoly from public scrutiny in 2008 (when hundreds of Ontarians died of C. diff infection) George told us that all we have to do is wash our hands, problem solved; we were told we don't need any C. diff inquires nor any investigations. The Liberals told us that they knew all about how C. diff is spread; so, we didn't have to worry; all was safe, all was under control.
Now, in 2011, we see that these false statements and unsupportable assurances were utter, negligent, self-serving Liberal lies .
Why isn't the Hamilton Spectator calling up Deb Matthews to ask her about George Smitherman's lies and deceptions, which he was foisting on Ontarians in 2008 (see here), where Keith Leslie reported:
"...But Smitherman and Premier Dalton McGuinty both said Monday that a coroner's inquest into a C. difficile outbreak in Sault Ste. Marie and other reports gave the government and health officials enough data on which to act, and that an inquiry is not needed.
Smitherman said everyone knows the problem is related to the spread of feces, and can best be combated by regular and thorough handwashing by hospital staff and visitors alike.
"We feel that we have a good body of evidence which directs everybody in health care on the methods forward to enhance the patient safety circumstances," he said. "I think that an inquest or inquiry of some kind would be a delay in the kind of progress that's possible to protect patients, so it's not something that I'm intending to move forward on..."
THAT WAS THE EXTENT OF IT: there was nothing from the Liberals about anti-biotics at all.
The Liberals - McGuinty, Smitherman, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, etc. - just hid from a public inquiry, which might well have found that hand-washing was part of the problem, but that other factors were possible and should be mitigated, thereby minimizing/staving-off future C. diff infections as much as possible.
But NO: McGuinty's Liberals - smugly presumptive, secretive, and as we now see in 2011, also negligent - deemed in 2008 that they knew all there was to know about C. diff., and that NO investigation into their Liberal health monopoly's C. diff-control measures was necessary!! (see here)
McGuinty's Liberals shut down ANY possibility of a C. diff investigation in 2008, and now, in 2011, the same thing starts all over again - yet, no-one is examining the link between the McGuinty/Smitherman Liberal lies and C. difficile-cover-up in 2008, and Niagara's subsequent deaths in 2011!!
If anyone was able to look into this link, I had hoped the Hamilton Spectator would be able to see the connection, and examine the culpability of the secretive, self-serving McGuinty government's actions in 2008 with the C. diff deaths in Niagara in 2011.
The St.Catharines Standard sure as hell won't be asking about that; they're still yearning for Harris to be their political pinata. Neither the Standard nor the Spectator have bothered to contact Niagara's Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, and ask for his comments regarding his own secretive Liberal government's negligence in 2008 to shut down any C.diff inquiry, and how that negligent decision contributed to the deaths we've now seen in Niagara in 2011.
Now Good Ole Jimmy's nowhere to be found (umm... when it comes to C. diff, that is: the press sees Jimmy regularly for all kinds of staged photo-ops, but health-care talk with Jimmy is strictly verboten)
Look how the leftist media chortled with smug derision when Stockwell Day made a gaffe about the direction of the flow of the Niagara River - leftists creamed their jeans for years over that.
Yet when the politically-and-geographically-retarded Liberal MPP Kim Craitor claimed in all sincerity that Canada has twelve provinces, this did NOT get mentioned - and, that yellow-shirt rally in Niagara Falls which Craitor addressed on July 6 was eagerly reported on by dozens of news sites! (and no, Sue Salzer: there were NOT "200" people in attendance...there were 100 at best. Get real.)
Kimmy means well, so... we gotta trust Kimmy! Yeah: just like we were supposed to trust and to believe that McGuinty and Smitherman and Bradley also meant well... all these Liberal asses 'meant well', didn't they? Therefore - they think they can't possibly be liable for the consequences of their political lies and cover-ups in their own despotic health monopoly.
*
Headlines about outbreaks of Clostridium difficile, a common infection in health-care facilities that has proven increasingly deadly due to new, more resistant, virulent strains of the bacteria, have become almost routine in Canada every year.
Four patients died in an outbreak in Cape Breton earlier this year. Similar outbreaks in Quebec in recent years have killed hundreds.
Now, Ontario hospitals are trying to cope with a series of outbreaks of the C. difficile superbug that have resulted, so far, in more than a dozen deaths.
One problem in combating outbreaks of the highly contagious C. difficile has been less than optimal adherence to good hygiene practices in health-care facilities, particularly among some groups of doctors.
But while there’s been so much emphasis on improving rates of handwashing and other hygiene measures, which have got better, experts say a key factor leading to some deaths — the over-prescribing of antibiotics for very ill or elderly patients that lowers their resistance to C. difficile — needs more attention.
The knowledge that overuse of antibiotics can leave certain patients more vulnerable to some infections isn’t new.
But with strains of common bugs like C. difficile becoming tougher to treat — ironically, also due to the longtime, general overuse of antibiotics in society — what’s needed, say experts like Andrew Morris, director of the joint antimicrobial stewardship program at the University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital in Ontario, is for doctors to cut back on antibiotic prescriptions.
That’s sound advice. Overuse of antibiotics has already spawned virtually untreatable strains of several deadly infectious agents. We know the elderly and very ill can be stripped of their already weakened internal defences, in the form of good bacteria, by antibiotics.
Yes, there has to be a balance. Antibiotics obviously must still play an important role in health-care treatment. But we believe experts like Morris are essentially right. The overuse of antibiotics — which, to be fair, there have been efforts to control — must end."
*
Hmm... but when George Smitherman was hiding his Liberal healthcare monopoly from public scrutiny in 2008 (when hundreds of Ontarians died of C. diff infection) George told us that all we have to do is wash our hands, problem solved; we were told we don't need any C. diff inquires nor any investigations. The Liberals told us that they knew all about how C. diff is spread; so, we didn't have to worry; all was safe, all was under control.
Now, in 2011, we see that these false statements and unsupportable assurances were utter, negligent, self-serving Liberal lies .
Why isn't the Hamilton Spectator calling up Deb Matthews to ask her about George Smitherman's lies and deceptions, which he was foisting on Ontarians in 2008 (see here), where Keith Leslie reported:
"...But Smitherman and Premier Dalton McGuinty both said Monday that a coroner's inquest into a C. difficile outbreak in Sault Ste. Marie and other reports gave the government and health officials enough data on which to act, and that an inquiry is not needed.
Smitherman said everyone knows the problem is related to the spread of feces, and can best be combated by regular and thorough handwashing by hospital staff and visitors alike.
"We feel that we have a good body of evidence which directs everybody in health care on the methods forward to enhance the patient safety circumstances," he said. "I think that an inquest or inquiry of some kind would be a delay in the kind of progress that's possible to protect patients, so it's not something that I'm intending to move forward on..."
THAT WAS THE EXTENT OF IT: there was nothing from the Liberals about anti-biotics at all.
The Liberals - McGuinty, Smitherman, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, etc. - just hid from a public inquiry, which might well have found that hand-washing was part of the problem, but that other factors were possible and should be mitigated, thereby minimizing/staving-off future C. diff infections as much as possible.
But NO: McGuinty's Liberals - smugly presumptive, secretive, and as we now see in 2011, also negligent - deemed in 2008 that they knew all there was to know about C. diff., and that NO investigation into their Liberal health monopoly's C. diff-control measures was necessary!! (see here)
McGuinty's Liberals shut down ANY possibility of a C. diff investigation in 2008, and now, in 2011, the same thing starts all over again - yet, no-one is examining the link between the McGuinty/Smitherman Liberal lies and C. difficile-cover-up in 2008, and Niagara's subsequent deaths in 2011!!
If anyone was able to look into this link, I had hoped the Hamilton Spectator would be able to see the connection, and examine the culpability of the secretive, self-serving McGuinty government's actions in 2008 with the C. diff deaths in Niagara in 2011.
The St.Catharines Standard sure as hell won't be asking about that; they're still yearning for Harris to be their political pinata. Neither the Standard nor the Spectator have bothered to contact Niagara's Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, and ask for his comments regarding his own secretive Liberal government's negligence in 2008 to shut down any C.diff inquiry, and how that negligent decision contributed to the deaths we've now seen in Niagara in 2011.
Now Good Ole Jimmy's nowhere to be found (umm... when it comes to C. diff, that is: the press sees Jimmy regularly for all kinds of staged photo-ops, but health-care talk with Jimmy is strictly verboten)
Look how the leftist media chortled with smug derision when Stockwell Day made a gaffe about the direction of the flow of the Niagara River - leftists creamed their jeans for years over that.
Yet when the politically-and-geographically-retarded Liberal MPP Kim Craitor claimed in all sincerity that Canada has twelve provinces, this did NOT get mentioned - and, that yellow-shirt rally in Niagara Falls which Craitor addressed on July 6 was eagerly reported on by dozens of news sites! (and no, Sue Salzer: there were NOT "200" people in attendance...there were 100 at best. Get real.)
Kimmy means well, so... we gotta trust Kimmy! Yeah: just like we were supposed to trust and to believe that McGuinty and Smitherman and Bradley also meant well... all these Liberal asses 'meant well', didn't they? Therefore - they think they can't possibly be liable for the consequences of their political lies and cover-ups in their own despotic health monopoly.
*
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