Hospital Infection Control & Prevention – June 1, 2017
June 1, 2017
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Emerging Candida auris Spreading in Healthcare Outbreaks
Candida auris causes high mortality, can transmit to patients on the hands of healthcare workers, persists in the environment, and can colonize people who then serve as a reservoir for outbreaks.
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Mysterious Paralysis Cases Continue in Children
A cryptic polio-like illness of unknown etiology is increasing, causing more severe symptoms in younger patients than when it first emerged in 2014, a CDC investigator reports.
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Wild, Wild West: Clinic Outbreak Breaks All the Rules
How egregious were the infection control violations in an outbreak in a New York City outpatient oncology clinic? Three patients died and investigators agreed it could have been much worse. The staggering array of breaks in basic practice prompted investigator Joel Ackelsberg, MD, MPH, to dub the outbreak “the wild, wild west.”
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Drugs, Death, and Infectious Diseases
The intersection of the national opioid epidemic and infection control has reached some strange and critical crossroads, from drug-diverting healthcare workers infecting patients to addicted admissions infecting themselves by injecting through their IV lines. Now, we have another twist: the distinct possibility that infectious diseases could be masking some of the national death toll of opioids.
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First Case of Hepatitis A Transmission by Transplant
Though hepatitis A virus (HAV) has spread via blood transfusion, the virus had never transmitted from a transplant patient. Now, through a circuitous chain of events, it has. Indeed, HAV spread from an organ donor to the transplant recipient, and then to three nurses providing post-transplant care, the CDC reports.1