EDMONTON – Poor hand-washing rates in Edmonton and Alberta hospitals contributed to the spread of multi-drug-resistant bacteria that infected several people and likely played a part in the death of a Royal Alexandra Hospital patient.
Health officials confirm that a frail man contracted the antibiotic-resistant acinetobacter bacteria carried to Edmonton and the Royal Alex by an infected female patient. She had travelled to the Indian subcontinent in April. While there, she required emergency surgery and returned home with an infected surgical site.
Emergency staff at the Royal Alex failed to isolate the woman for three days, during which she contaminated the hospital with acinetobacter bacteria and New Delhi metallobetalactamase, or NDM, which are genes on bacterium resistant to multiple antibiotics. Alberta recorded only one case of NDM last year.
Dr. Mark Joffe, senior medical director of infection, prevention and control for Alberta Health Services, said the patient who died picked up the same strain of acinetobacter while having surgery at the Royal Alex. Joffe confirmed the bacteria also infected two other patients who are now carriers of acinetobacter but not ill. Another two patients picked up the NDM variety without becoming sick.
Three of those patients remain isolated in the Royal Alex. Joffe said Alberta Health Services is investigating why the originally infected traveller wasn’t immediately isolated in emergency and why hand-washing rates among staff at Edmonton hospitals is a dismal 43 per cent, compared to a provincial average of 50 per cent.
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