Hospital initiative aims to stamp out superbugs

     Superbugs are currently one big issue that hospitals everywhere have to try to resolve. Superbugs are drug-resistant bacteria that lives in the hallways of hospitals, they infect thousands annually and killing an estimated 12,000 Canadians. The deaths of lives suffered from these bugs in Canada take the combined stats of deaths to breast cancer and deaths to car accidents in Canada. There are now new initiatives to stop these bugs, two years ago, five hospitals took part in a pilot project regarding superbugs; on Monday January 10, this program expanded to 30 other hospitals. The approach of this new initiative is to put the duty on the front line staff to come up with strategies to prevent and reduce the spread of diseases to multiple floors. The leader of this new initiative, Michael Gardam reveals that they have been trying to fight these bugs for over 40 years now and the rates of their reproduction keep going up, which makes things worse. However, with this new program, they are finally starting to see some results. The 30 hospitals taking part in this initiative are going to, over the next year, will develope tactics for specific wards that take aim for methicillin -resistant Staphylococcus aureus and a host of other superbugs.

     What kills patients at hospitals is not the disease they are diagnosed with, but rather it is the disease which lowers their immune system levels leaving their body vulnerable to attacks. More than 200,000 patients suffer from hospital acquired diseases in a year. These diseases are results of three main factors; over prescribing of antibiotics that have helped create drug-resistant bugs; old and overcrowded hospitals; and health-care workers not following basic hand hygiene. In Toronto East General Hospital, they've come up with the idea of putting green tags on IV poles to indicate that they are disinfected, results of this idea have yet to be analyzed. While in Vancouver General Hospital, staff on particular floors walk around with hand sanitizer to clean patients' hands.

     I think that hospitals have put this problem aside for too long and giving too much time for the bugs to grow to the point where they are very hard to get rid of. As establishments of health care, hospitals should provide a safe environment for patients to recover, not one where they are at risk of developing other diseases. Despite this, it is still good that hospitals are raising awareness about this issue before it gets even more out of hand. In my opinion, this problem all started with the inconsistency of keeping the hospital clean. When hospitals decided that one or two janitors are able to monitor and clean a whole hospital, they were already contributing to the start of this problem. Why is it that there are so many people that work with paper works versus those that do cleaning and why do hospitals prioritize paper work over sanitation. The insufficient amount of janitors left hospitals filthy and an ideal environment for the growth of nasty bacteria and bugs. Hospitals are slowly realizing their mistakes and are putting more money and effort into the sanitary compartment than ever before.