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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Treatments abroad risky, patients warned
Superbug case tied to hospital in India
CODIE MCLACHLAN / EDMONTON JOURNAL Enlarge Image
Alberta Health Services officials Dr. Gerry Predy (left) and Dr. Mark Joffe tell reporters patients going to other countries for treatment can pick up infections.
EDMONTON -- Doctors in Alberta are warning people that there are risks involved in travelling to foreign lands to get medical help, and they're citing a new antibiotic-resistant superbug emerging in southern Asia as a prime example.
The province confirmed Thursday it had one reported case of infection in the spring. Dr. Gerry Predy, medical officer of health, would say only that the individual had been in a hospital in India before being infected and was discharged after being treated back in Canada.
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Dr. Mark Joffe, Alberta Health Services' senior medical director, said anyone considering travel for medical treatment anywhere in the world should weigh the risks.
"I would advise individuals to look at their options carefully and to understand that there are consequences to decisions," Joffe told a news conference.
"There are potential complications to any procedures, anywhere they are done."
The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases carried a study earlier this week describing bacteria with resistance conferred by an enzyme called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1.
It has been seen largely in E. coli bacteria and on DNA structures that can be easily copied and passed on to other types of bacteria. It is already widespread in India and has been identified in 37 people who returned to Britain after surgery in India or Pakistan. It has also been detected in Australia, the United States, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Only one other infection has been reported in Canada. It involves a woman who was successfully treated with a combination of antibiotics in B.C., again after being in India.
The superbug is expected to spread worldwide, as many Americans and Europeans travel to India and Pakistan for elective procedures such as cosmetic surgery, the researchers said. India has also become a destination for people seeking so-called liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis. The treatment is based on a theory, first put forward by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni, that blocked veins in the neck or spinal cord are to blame for MS.
The Indian Health Ministry came out swinging against the Lancet study Thursday, according to published reports in that country's media.
The Times of India quoted a health ministry statement saying the report was tainted by funding from the European Union and drug companies.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government reported earlier this week that dangerous infections caused by the bacterium methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, appear to be declining in health-care settings across the nation.
An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 28 per cent drop in cases of MRSA contracted in hospitals from 2005 to 2008 and a 17 per cent decrease in cases contracted outside hospitals but among those who had kidney dialysis or had been in a hospital or nursing home in the previous year.
MRSA has been the most prominent of the infections that spread easily in hospitals. Though the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium is commonly found on skin and in the nose and is typically harmless, in cases of invasive MRSA -- the focus of this study -- it spreads to the blood, lungs, soft tissue, bones or joints.
-- The Canadian Press / Los Angeles Times
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 13, 2010 A6
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