What hospitals are not telling you about killer bugs in their wards

In August, pulmonologist Avya Bansal received a 65-year-old patient in Mumbai. She came intubated, in a state of respiratory distress.

Bansal immediately carried out a quick screening test for various pathogens, and found it to be positive for the acinetobacter bacteria.

Acinetobacter is found in abundance in hospital environments – and the bacteria is always on the lookout for immuno-compromised people.

The 65-year-old had undergone a hip replacement surgery at another city hospital. Five days later, she developed fever, then pneumonia and slipped into respiratory distress. When she came to Bansal in Bombay Hospital, she was on a ventilator.

“A classic case of hospital-acquired infection,” Bansal noted.

The senior citizen already had lung fibrosis. Acinetobacter worsened it to the extent that her lungs could no longer take in or expel air even as antibiotics dripped in vain through a saline bottle.

A week later, she died of respiratory failure.

Bansal said infections, like hers, could “possibly be prevented” if the hospital staff followed stringent infection control measures for immuno-compromised patients.

But the patient’s family did not know of such a concept. Even if they did, there was no way to check the infection rate at the hospital where she had been admitted for the surgery. Such data is not publicly disclosed by hospitals in India.

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