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Source: ONE News -
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North Shore Hospital is urging patients and visitors not to be alarmed by measures it is taking to deal with a superbug sweeping through wards.
It has confirmed that as many as one in five people leaving the hospital have the infection and most will have contracted it during their stay.
But the hospital says it is only a risk for people in a frail condition and is unlikely to kill.
Health authorities are confident measures being taken at the hospital will reduce numbers further and say the reason the figures are so high in the first place is because the board looks harder than most for superbugs.
Professor Johan Rosman from Waitemata District Health Board told ONE News many hospitals have the policy that they screen only for ESBL if there is some suspicion such as an unexplained infection.
"We screen every patient that is admitted to our hospitals," says Rosman, adding that they hate multi-resistant bugs such as MRSA and VRE which they regard as very dangerous bugs.
Nearby at Middlemore Hospital in the Counties Manukau region there is a different policy and they don't swab everyone coming through the door but only look at high risk individuals.
And at this stage North Shore is adopting simple preventative measures such as effective hand washing adopted in the swine flu epidemic which has already seen a dramatic drop in infectious diseases.
