(CP)
Thursday, March 27, 2008

TORONTO—Antibiotic resistant Staph bacteria cost an estimated 2,300 Canadians their lives in 2006 and added a whopping $200 million-$250 million to the country’s health-care bill, figures extrapolated from newly-released national detection rates suggest.
They also suggest Canadian hospitals saw 29,000 new patients carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in 2006, of whom 11,700 had new MRSA infections (he remainder would have been carrying the bacteria on their skin or in their nostrils).

Those figures were calculated based on detection rates for MRSA gathered through a national surveillance program which drew data from 48 hospitals.
Because of the mix of health-care institutions in the surveillance program, the data are thought to reflect the situation in Canadian hospitals in general.
Dr. Andrew Simor, a Toronto infectious diseases expert who co-chairs the surveillance program, calculated the extrapolations.
The 2006 figures show a slow and steady increase over previous years, he said of the data, contained in a report issued today by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“I think it’s a mixed story. There’s good news and there’s bad news,” said Simor, chief microbiologist at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
“The good news is our rates remain substantially less than what is seen in the United States and many other parts of the world. No question about that—that’s good news.
“The bad news is despite our best efforts, we’ve not yet been able to control the spread of MRSA in our hospitals, and there is a continued and steady increase that has taken place, albeit at a slower rate than is seen south of the border.
“Nonetheless, this is of concern.”
The director general of the Public Health Agency’s centre for communicable diseases and infection control said more needs to be done to battle MRSA, which is the most common and most important—from a disease and cost point of view—of the antibiotic resistant organisms that plague Canadian hospitals.
“It just speaks to the fact that antimicrobial resistance is just a reality in today’s world,” said Dr. Howard Njoo.
“And it’s something we need to address. Because it’s not just a hospital or health care-based issue or problem. It’s something in the wider community.”
The report reveals the hospitals in the surveillance network detected 5,787 new MRSA cases in 2006, 62 percent of which were thought to have been acquired in network hospitals.
Fifteen percent were believed to have been so-called community acquired MRSA. The remainder would have been acquired in long-term care facilities, hospitals outside the network, or were of unknown origin.
The rate of community acquired MRSA has virtually doubled in this country in the last five years, Simor said.
The main strain of the bacteria found to be spreading in non-hospital settings often causes hard-to-heal skin infections, but also can trigger life-threatening pneumonias and bloodstream infections.
The spread of MRSA bacteria outside of the walls of hospitals, among people who don’t fit the traditional risk profile for acquisition of the bacteria, is seen as an alarming trend by infectious disease experts.