Professor Anthony MBewu, the president of the Medical Research Council, predicted this week that hospital-acquired infections, a global public-health problem, will reach the scale of pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and Malaria, local Sunday Times newspaper reported.

“The emergence of this in developing countries such as South Africa is a huge problem as it is allied to antibiotic resistance, ” he said. “This is going to be a very, very serious problem.”

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang released a report this week confirming that a hospital-acquired infection had killed 22 babies at a hospital north of Durban.

MBewu, a cardiologist and physician, announced this week that the council would launch a national investigation into hospital infections.

“The study would also research the feasibility of a surveillance system which ... will then be able to pick up the incidence of infections in hospitals early, before they become catastrophic,” he said.

Last December it was reported that antibiotic-resistant superbugs put as many as one in seven patients admitted to major hospitals at risk of a potentially lethal infection.

Microbiologists warned then that South Africa was in the front line of the battle against superbugs. A Wits University infection- control expert, Professor Adriano Duse, slammed the seven-week delay in investigating the deaths of the babies as unacceptable.

“Somebody should have been picking up the unusually high infection rates and deaths. The common denominators in the outbreaks of hospital-acquired infections are understaffing and overcrowding, year in and year out,” he said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS