Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned on March 5 that “nightmare bacteria” called CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobactericeae) are raging through US health-care facilities. But the CDC’s prescription falls short of what’s needed.
CRE is untreatable by most antibiotics and kills up to half of all patients infected with it. It’s five times as deadly as the notorious MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections that have plagued US hospitals for decades.
And New York is hit hardest.
If CREisn’t stopped, it will make chemotherapy and organ transplants less feasible, because immune-compromised hospital patients will be at great risk for untreatable CRE infections. Commonplace urinary tract infections will become deadly, because the germ will thwart antibiotics and rush into the kidney and then the bloodstream.
Today’s physicians haven’t watched infected patients die without treatment options, but that could be ahead. And people needing medical care might have to wonder: Is it safe to go to the hospital?
Frieden’s “call to action” warned that the “window of opportunity” to stop CRE is closing. He said the CDC has watched these bacteria, which originated in North Carolina, spread for 12 years to 200 hospitals and 18 percent of nursing homes in at least 42 states.
Yet the agency has persuaded only six states to require hospitals to report cases, and New York isn’t one of them. State lawmakers need to act now.
It’s shocking that the CDC delayed so long and still has no national plan. A decade ago, patients treated in New York hospitals picked up CRE and carried it to health-care facilities in New Jersey, Florida and Arizona, launching the nationwide spread, and even brought it to Europe and Israel.
The agency claims its protocols to control CRE are effective. In fact, they’re half-hearted — as the tragic outbreak at the National Institutes of Health Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., proves.
The outbreak began in June 2011 when a 43-year-old woman was admitted from a New York hospital. Her chart alerted the NIH that she was carrying CRE, so staff isolated her and wore gowns, gloves and masks when treating her. All CDC precautions were followed, researchers later confirmed.
The woman recovered and left the hospital — but a male patient who’d no contact with her came down with CRE. Then a woman patient became infected. Both died. Week after week, patients succumbed to infections traced back to the New Yorker.
“The outbreak was finally contained by implementing tougher standards,” said the NIH researchers — tougher than CDC’s lax guidelines.
To halt the outbreak, the NIH screened all patients for CRE, including patients with no symptoms. Rooms were double-cleaned with bleach and then misted with a hydrogen peroxide sprayer.
That’s what hospitals and nursing homes should do now.
Israelalso showed howpublic-health authorities should
respond to CRE. Soon after the germ was brought into the country, the government launched a campaign with mandatory reporting of cases, screening and hospital inspections. Israel reduced CRE by nearly 80 percent in 14 months.
Our public officials need to make it a top priority to fight CRE and keep hospitals safe. Sadly, Frieden’s busy playing politics, claiming the sequester will mean “less money to solve outbreaks.” Here in New York, Mayor Bloomberg should focus his Health Department on hospital safety, not nanny-state meddling about what New Yorkers eat. Finally, the public should issue its own call to action. There isn’t much time.
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lt. governor of New York.