[LINK] The quiet plague

[rfmcdonald]

I first heard the news of Ontario's Clostridium difficile outbreak, reported to have claimed well over 200 lives in the past year, yesterday. Coincidentally, that's the same day that I picked up Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague. At least now Ontario will (finally!) be tracking this lethal hospital-borne disease organism. Well, soon.

All Ontario hospitals will have to start reporting on the number of cases they have of the potentially deadly C. difficile bacteria starting Sept. 30, Health Minister George Smitherman announced Tuesday as the opposition accused the Liberal government of covering up the extent of the outbreak.

The Conservatives and New Democrats claim Ontario was too slow to come up with a plan to deal with C. difficile after it claimed 2,000 lives in Quebec in 2003, and insist some of the 260 deaths reported so far in seven Ontario hospitals could have been prevented.

They also say the public has a right to know the extent of the C. difficile outbreak in all 157 hospitals in the province - data that Smitherman said Tuesday he simply doesn't have.

"Either your government doesn't know the answer, which certainly speaks to incompetence and a total disregard for patient safety, or this is a coverup by the government," Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer told the legislature. "Either way, what is needed today to give the public some assurance that everything is being done that needs to be done is a thorough, independent investigation."

Smitherman rejected a public inquiry, saying the government and hospital officials already have all the information they need to deal with C. difficile outbreaks, and said an investigation would only delay new patient safety protocols even longer.

[. . .]

Witmer said Tuesday she couldn't understand why Smitherman isn't ordering hospitals to immediately report outbreaks of C. difficile.

"The data is readily available," she said. "If anyone calls a hospital, they can give you the number of patients who have had C. difficile, the number of patients who have died. I can't believe that the Ministry of Health doesn't have all of those figures readily available."