[ad_1]
On Monday, the report prepared by the Commission created by the president of Veneto Luca Zaia to investigate the case of infections caused by the bacterium Citrobacter koseri in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units of the Hospital de la Mujer y el Niño de Borgo Trento was presented. , in Verona. The 52-page report concludes that an “epidemic event” has occurred and that since the opening of the facility, on April 4, 2017, until July 17, 2020, “91 positive subjects for Citrobacter koseri have been identified”; 9 babies “developed an invasive disease caused by Citrobacter koseri” and among them 5 suffered serious brain damage and 4 died.
Citrobacter Koseri is part of the same family as Salmonella and Escherichia, infects both humans and animals, and is found in contaminated food and water. It mainly affects babies, premature babies, and immunosuppressed adults, and causes sepsis, meningitis, and nerve damage.
The Commission notes that the first case emerged in November 2018 and that for the whole of 2019 there were no reports to identify the problem despite three new cases, which increased further in 2020 probably due to increased “screening activities “. to identify positive patients for the bacteria, “it is not expected until 2019.” In fact, “in the first 5 months of 2020, 33.6 percent of newborns were affected and, at some moments, according to the minutes, the affectation involved 75 percent of hospitalized subjects.”
The Commission could not establish the causes of the presence of the bacteria but, according to the data collected and the analyzes carried out, it is probable “that the department has faced environmental contamination that caused the spread of the pathogen, with the appearance of invasive infections, with an initial underestimation and with the late recognition of the problem by the doctors of the NICU (neonatal intensive care, ed) and with the consequent low participation of the Hospital Infections Committee at least until the 1st quarter of 2020 “.
In particular, analyzes carried out in June 2020 revealed the presence of the bacteria in the jets of some taps in neonatal and pediatric intensive care and on the internal and external surfaces of the bottles used by two newborns who tested positive. To wash children, you can use the water drawn from the taps equipped with an antibacterial filter that, according to the minutes, were only added in July 2020. It is not clear if the operators, parents and visitors sanitized their hands with an alcoholic solution , recommended in neonatal and pediatric intensive care wards and necessary after the discovery in the water of another bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, in May 2020.
The report highlights that the Integrated University Hospital of Verona (AOUIV), which is the health center of which the Borgo Trento Hospital for Women and Children is part, has never communicated the cases to the Region or to Azienda Zero, the body that administers the Venetian health system, as it should have done and that the cases were initially reported by the newspapers, in particular by theSand from Verona.
The investigations had begun after the complaint to the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office of Francesca Frezza, a woman who had given birth to a girl at the Verona hospital in April 2019 and who later transferred her to the Gaslini hospital in Genoa due to the disease. The girl died in November and an autopsy revealed that the cause was an infection caused by Citrobacter koseri. Frezza then denounced the case to the Verona prosecutor’s office and the Veneto Region appointed two commissions: one external, coordinated by Professor Vincenzo Baldo, Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the University of Padua, and another made up of members of the regional administration . Meanwhile, on June 12, Francesco Cobello, general director of the Integrated University Hospital, had ordered the closure and cleaning of the Obstetrics ward, which includes the Birth Point, Neonatal Intensive Care and Pediatric Intensive Care. The department reopened yesterday, Monday, September 1.
[ad_2]
