Singapore hospitals on alert for killer bug

Published: Thursday December 2, 2010 MYT 3:16:00 PM
Singapore hospitals on alert for killer bug

SINGAPORE: Singapore is preparing for a killer bug that could head this way, as hospitals step up checks on the more susceptible patients especially those on antibiotics and the elderly, China's Xinhua news agency quoted local media as reporting on Thursday.

The Strait Times reported that the immediate symptom is diarrhoea. All patients suffering from diarrhoea and who are on antibiotics are undergoing checks.

Doctors in public hospitals also want to be certain that such patients are not infected with the killer strain of the Clostridium difficile bacterium called the ribotype 027.

The strain wreaked havoc in about 30 hospitals in Quebec province in Canada in 2003 and 2004, infecting more than 1,400 patients. Many needed urgent surgery and about 14 percent died within one month of diagnosis.

Several hospitals in the United States were also affected. The bug has since crossed the Atlantic and has emerged in hospitals in Britain, Ireland and Denmark over the past two years.

Doctors fear that it is only a matter of time before it finds its way to Asia. The bacterium, commonly known as C. difficile, has been around for a long time, and is a common hospital-acquired bug.

It is only the ribotype 027 that has proven deadly, though the normal version can also be fatal sometimes.

People on antibiotics can get the bug because such medication disrupts the good bacteria in their bodies, which would normally keep the dormant Clostridium difficile spores from turning infectious. - Bernama