Do you REALLY think Uncle Sam would make a good doctor?
Authorities in Spain launched Sunday an investigation into the deaths of at least 18 people in a reported bacteria epidemic at one of Madrid's main hospitals.
Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who was on an official visit to Niger, announced a probe into what she described as "a very, very serious incident" at the 12th October University Hospital.
El Pais reported that at least 18 people had died in a bacteria epidemic that infected more than 250 patients over a period of 20 months at the hospital.
The deaths were caused by Acinetobacter baumannii, a highly virulent hospital-acquired infection that has strains that are resistant to most drugs, the daily reported. The situation was so bad at the hospital that the intensive care unit had to be destroyed so that a new, non-contaminated structure could be built, the report said.
The hospital's director, Joaquin Martinez, denied at a press conference alongside his preventative medicine chief Jose Ramon de Juanes that 18 deaths were directly caused by the bacterial infection.
Patients in a critical state "die from their illness, accompanied exceptionally by an infection of multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and other types of micro-organisms, because they are more vulnerable due to their health problems," said Juanes.
According to reports, the bacterium infected a total of 252 patients between February 2006 and its eradication 20 months later. More than 100 of those patients died, although only 18 of them directly from this infection, the report said. Link
Sooo, the hospital's director and his chief of preventive medicine deny the infections had anything to do with the deaths - and yet they demolished and rebuilt the intensive care unit anyway. Folks, that's called accountability under socialized medicine. Nothing that could or might go wrong with you or your treatment will be the provider's fault - thereby depriving you of any civil redress via litigation. I am no fan of frivolous lawsuits but am a staunch advocate of justifiable civil actions against obvious neglect, malpractice or less than stellar medicine - the kind we have here, as a rule, and the kind they don't have in nations where so called 'universal healthcare' is mandated. Ask any Brit or Cannook.
We have one of the top hospitals in the state. I had to go in for something minor, but it required a two-night stay. It ended up being a 24 night stay with I.V. lines and a naso-gastric tube. Oh, yuk, I was sick. I was well when I went in. And that hospital is really good. Scary to think of one that isn't.
Posted by: Phoenix | 05/11/2008 at 08:19 PM
Spent my entire working life in and around hospitals....
Most bacteria, etc. in hospitals can be attributed to patients and visitors, etc. bringing it into the hospital.
Posted by: Oldcatman | 05/12/2008 at 07:36 AM
Sounds like a Civil War hospital. For all our progress, it seems not much has changed. I once read that bacteria were the true life on Earth, the rest of us were just transients.
Posted by: Uncle Fester | 05/12/2008 at 05:40 PM