Transcript
JAMES FONG: Essentially we have had on outbreak of hospital-acquired infection. Acinetobacter baumannii and similar organisms are what we call hospital-acquired infections.
Infections have occurred in newborns who are admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit because of severe illness. At this point in time we are quite convinced that the severe illness that got them in was the reason why they died. However, after the deaths it was found that these bugs were also growing in the blood. We had known these bugs were in the blood over the course of the treatment and these were being managed.
JAMIER TAHANA: So these babies had the bacteria, but you believe it was different reasons that caused the deaths?
JF: Yeah they were admitted with very severe dieses and they would not have acquired these bacteria in local communities.
JT: It's not risk to someone who is healthy, so this bacteria takes advantage of their depleted immune systems, or their current illness. So a baby may have died from pneumonia, but what's to say that this bacteria didn't exacerbate it, or help with leading to their deaths?
JF: Yeah, it may have contributed to making it more difficult to treat. But that's about as much as we can say because if these babies were not sick the bacteria would not have got them in the first place.
JT: Still it's a very serious bacteria that has forced you to close part of the neonatal intensive care unit, hasn't it?
JF: Yes, I mean this is something that happens everywhere in the world. Once you [are aware of] infections you are actually supposed to increase the measures to ensure the transmission of bugs to the baby is reduces.
JT: So what has the hospital done?
JF: Well, we are reviewing all of our infection protocols and we have got the WHO to help us. WHO is bringing in some people from other countries to look at infection control protocols not only in [our hospital] but in all three divisional hospitals. We are hoping that apart from that we have also started some purchases of some of the consumables that are not in stock to make sure that it covers for the possibility that it is a contributing factor.
JT: Consumables that were not in stock, what does that mean?
JF: This is a number of consumables that relate to ventilators, and tubings that are require to keep the baby going.
JT: So what, you are short of tubing, or something, that could helped spread it?
JF: Yeah... we are constantly struggling with the issue of consumables - it is a persistent issue. Unfortunately, it has been an issue in many developing countries that have struggled to sort out a budget for these sorts of things.
JT: So there could have been some cross-contamination there?
JF: There could have been, yes. That’s what we fear most and that's why we are investigating it more strongly.
JT: How will you bring it under control and how long may it take?
JF: We continued to monitor and we actually start cleaning, it’s called triple cleaning, an intensive cleaning process that happens in the room. Then we are monitoring for any new cases and seeing that once we have started that the cases have stopped appearing then we go through a period of trying to make sure there’s a good break in cases before we use the rooms again.
