According to the Independent, citing a study by Professor Mark Wilcox (Leeds University, and a member of the Hospital Infection Society), hundreds of hospital wards are being closed, and the UK National Health Service is losing £160m a year because of the lethal bug Clostridium Difficile.
Clostridium Difficile benefits from two interacting forces:
Overuse of antibiotics This produces stronger bacteria and weaker patients.
Complex targets Government targets on hospital infections have focused on MRSA, which has led to other hospital infections being neglected. Furthermore, patients are shuffled around the hospital to satisfy healthcare productivity targets, which increases the rate of infection. Meanwhile, hospital cleaning is driven by cost targets.
As with many complex ecosystems, there are some winners and losers. Does that mean the purpose of this complex system is to promote the interests of Clostridium Difficile? What does POSIWID tell us about the possibility of effective interventions into this complex system?
Update. My original post cited a news item from the Independent (June 8th, 2005), but this has now disappeared. Here is a later story from the same source.
Jeremy Laurance, Hospital superbug threatening to spread through community (Independent, 21 December 2005)
My post also included a picture How Clostridium Difficile wins by default, but this has got lost.
Previous post on Innovation and MRSA: When Knowledge is Free (September 2004)
No comments:
Post a Comment