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March 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) — The dangerous bacteria
Clostridium difficile spreads not only in hospitals but also in
other health-care settings, causing infections and death rates to hit
“historic highs,” U.S. health officials reported Tuesday.
“C. difficile is a deadly diarrheal infection that poses a
significant threat to U.S. health care patients,” Ileana Arias, principal
deputy director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
said during a morning news conference. “C. difficile is causing
many Americans to suffer and die.”
The germ is linked to about 14,000 deaths in the United States every
year. People most at risk from C. difficile are those who take
antibiotics and also receive care in any medical facility.
“This failure is more difficult to accept because these are treatable,
often preventable deaths,” Arias said. “We know what can be done to do a
better job of protecting our patients.”
Much of the growth of this bacterial epidemic has been due to the
overuse of antibiotics, the CDC noted in its March 6 report. Unlike
healthy people, people in poor health are at high risk for C.
difficile infection.
Almost 50 percent of infections are among people under 65, but more
than 90 percent of deaths are among those aged 65 and older, according to
the report.
Previous estimates found that about 337,000 people are hospitalized
each year because of C. difficile infections. Those are
historically high levels and add at least $1 billion in extra costs to the
health care system, the CDC said.
However, these estimates might not completely reflect C.
difficile’s overall impact.
According to the new report, 94 percent of C. difficile
infections are related to medical care, with 25 percent among hospital
patients and 75 percent among nursing home patients or people recently
seen in doctors’ offices and clinics.
Although the proportion of infection is lowest in hospitals, they are
at the core of prevention because many infected patients are transferred
to hospitals for care, raising the risk of spreading the infection there,
the CDC said.
Half of those with C. difficile infections were already infected
when they were admitted to the hospital, often after getting care at
another facility, the agency noted.
The other 50 percent of infections were related to care at the hospital
where the infection was diagnosed.
The CDC said that these infections could be reduced if health care
workers follow simple infection control precautions, such as prescribing
fewer antibiotics, washing their hands more often and isolating infected
patients.
These and other measures have reduced C. difficile infections by
20 percent in hospitals in Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, the CDC
said.
In England, infections have been cut 50 percent in three years, the
agency said.
Patients get C. difficile infections mostly after taking
antibiotics, which can diminish the body’s “good” bacteria for several
months.
That’s when patients can get sick from C. difficile, which can
be picked up from contaminated surfaces or spread by health care
providers.
The predominant sign of C. difficile infection is diarrhea,
which can cause dehydration. If serious, the infection can become deadly.
Other symptoms include fever, nausea and loss of appetite.
The CDC advises that if diarrhea occurs after a patient starts
antibiotics, C. difficile should be suspected and treatment
continued with another antibiotic.
Commenting on the report, infectious disease expert Dr. Marc Siegel, an
associate professor of medicine at New York University, said, “All these
recommendations are fine; the problem is they are not going to work, you
can’t stop these practices. This bug exists in a climate of overuse of
antibiotics.”
It is hard to eradicate C. difficile because it buries itself in
the colon, then recurs and testing isn’t always accurate, Siegel said.
“It’s a pervasive problem in hospitals, and even in communities,” he
said.
More information
For more about C. difficile infection, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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