News

A deadly outbreak of a highly contagious superbug at an Ontario hospital claimed the lives of one-third of the patients afflicted with the disease, a far greater toll than previously believed.

Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington announced yesterday that 91 of the 177 patients diagnosed with Clostridium difficile, commonly known as C. difficile, over a 20-month period ending last December died in the institution. It blamed the disease for 62 of the deaths.

"The results from the review have saddened all of us," Don Scott, chief executive officer of the hospital, said yesterday.

Joseph Brant is among a handful of hospitals in Ontario that have been hit with a severe outbreak of the so-called Quebec strain of C. difficile, a particularly virulent form that caused 2,000 deaths in that province. But in Ontario, the scope of the problem is not known, because hospitals are not required to release statistics on hospital-acquired infections to the public.

Only a small number of the province's 154 hospitals, including Joseph Brant, voluntarily release such statistics. As a result, the public is in the dark about the extent of the problem even though Ontario is believed to have the highest rates of the superbug in Canada, said Michael Gardam, director of infection prevention and control for the University Health Network, who performed the mortality study on patients at Joseph Brant. He said the disease tends to afflict the elderly but also often goes undetected because it is easily misdiagnosed.

"I would assume there are other hospitals out there that have high rates that are either trying to control it on their own or don't even really know they have a high rate yet," Dr. Gardam said in an interview yesterday.

The results of the study were sobering for everyone involved. It found that the outbreak of C. difficile began in May of 2006 - nine months earlier than hospital officials initially thought. The number of fatalities was also much higher than a previous estimate of 15 deaths and well above the rate experienced at other hospitals that have "come clean" in fighting the disease, Dr. Gardam said.

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman described the number of deaths as "very, very startling." He vowed yesterday that the province will make public reporting of such infections mandatory by the end of the year.

"We have an obligation for transparency and to apprise people of information that's important to them, to know what risks are out there," Mr. Smitherman told reporters.