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A tale of two outbreaks

Less than two weeks ago, we blogged about the KPC outbreak at the NIH Hospital. This outbreak garnered a lot of media attention, most of which was positive and highlighted how the epidemiologists at NIH worked to control the outbreak, as well as the relatively novel application of whole genome sequencing for outbreak investigation.

Today, the Daytona Beach News Journal reports on a local nosocomial outbreak of Acinetobacter infections. The article as well as the state health department report can be viewed here. Unfortunately, the hospital appears to have had problems with its infection prevention infrastructure that undoubtedly impacted its ability to control this difficult pathogen.

So what are the take home messages from these two outbreaks?
  1. The general public is highly interested in hospital infections and the mainstream media finds them to be quite juicy
  2. Transparency is paramount
  3. Infection Prevention Programs are enormously important patient safety programs that must be funded and staffed to maintain their effectiveness. 
Photo: Acinetobacter. Janice Carr, CDC.


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  1. CocoaICPSeptember 2, 2012 at 10:06 PM

    Take home message from these two Florida outbreaks:

    huge outbreak of TB in the Jacksonville,
    Florida area (publish Jyly 10,2012 in this blog: http://haicontroversies.blogspot.com/search?q=tb+hospital+florida

    and now this outbreak in Daytona Halifax

    reflects the major cuts in staffing Local Health departments in Florida have had since Governor Scott has taken office.

    ReplyDelete
  2. FancyScrubsSeptember 3, 2012 at 6:17 AM

    We would say #2 and #3. Sad but true.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ViscotSeptember 5, 2012 at 9:35 AM

    "Infection Prevention Programs are enormously important patient safety programs that must be funded and staffed to maintain their effectiveness." This final point really hits home. Infection Prevention is key, more measures should be taken to ensure their upkeep.

    ReplyDelete

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