Bridgetown.
Three premature babies, were discovered to be infected with a drug resistant strain of bacteria last Thursday at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
This was revealed by senior staff of the QEH at a press conference yesterday afternoon
The emergence of this strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae came after other strains had been detected over the last 18 months.
This is what prompted the QEH to raise the alert internally about their practices to ensure they could nip this development in the bud, CEO Dr Dexter James, explained.
According to the Head of Paediatrics Dr. Clyde Cave, they have found that a particular regiment of antibiotics is having some effect, and furthermore, parents of children in the neonatal intensive care unit should not worry.
Cave said having found the presence of the bacteria in the hospital, the concern has been identifying the bacteria and making efforts to constrain it. He noted because the patients are in the NICU, by their very nature they would already be ill, which in itself created some challenges given that there were other factors in play.
He stated because they were still investigating and had not yet discerned a cause of the bacteria, he could not give further details on the cases.
Noting that they had identified a different strain of the klebsiella pneumonia organism.
Cave said: “Coincidentally, with this attempt and the recruitment of PAHO to look at the problem, we have identified a completely different and susceptible strain, a very few cases but they have emerged in our NICU which is a concern because the patients in the NICU are premature and therefore at risk.
“So before this becomes a problem of major significance, once we identify more than one or two cases of a particular germ we look to investigate to see where it is coming from, if there are any factors we can control to make it safer for our patients,”he added.
