Federal authorities are warning hospitals across the country to beware of a highly drug resistant bacteria that wounded troops are bringing back from Afghanistan and that could inadvertently be spread to civilian patients.
The threat posed by the resistant strain of acinetobacter baumannii underlines the health care system's general lack of readiness for such emerging infections as they arrive in the country, said a senior Public Health Agency of Canada official.
Several soldiers being treated in civilian hospitals here have already developed pneumonia from the drug-resistant strain of the bacteria, which scientists say likely originated in the Canadian-led trauma centre at Kandahar Air Field.
Hospitals are being advised by the agency to screen injured soldiers for the bug, and take infection-control precautions if they test positive.
No transmission to non-military patients has been detected yet, and the bug is not seen as much of a danger to healthy people outside of hospital.
The fear, however, is that the resistant strain could genetically combine with more easily treatable versions of the bacteria that are more common in Canadian intensive-care units, said Shirley Paton of the public-health agency.
"We're seeing a new organism being introduced into the Canadian swamp of organisms, this one being highly resistant," she said.
"If we get someone with this highly resistant strain, are the two bugs going to get together into one? ... We're quite concerned that this will start spreading and become the acinetobacter of choice in the ICUs. We're really worried about that kind of transmission."
Read the full story in The National Post
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