Nearly 40 per cent of hospital infection-control experts believe their hospitals aren’t clean enough to prevent spread of the toxic gut infection C. difficile and other potentially lethal organisms, a national survey has found.
About one-quarter million Canadians will be sickened this year with an infection they pick up in hospital, and death rates from highly drug-resistant microbes are rising.
“We’re just not achieving the results we need,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Dick Zoutman, an infectious-disease specialist and professor in the school of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
The findings come from an online survey completed in 2012 and the first half of 2013 by infection-control professionals at 119 hospitals nationwide. The survey was designed to assess how well infection-control programs collaborate with environmental services — the people responsible for disinfecting patient rooms.
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