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More babies have killer disease
08/06/2005 20:22 - (SA)
Durban - Two babies remain in a critical condition in KwaZulu-Natal hospitals suffering from Klebsiella infection which has killed 11 babies in the past two weeks, the province's health department said on Wednesday.
One is at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital and the other has been transferred to Mt Edgecombe Hospital.
"The (Mahatma Gandhi) hospital is not admitting any babies to the neonatal intensive care unit nursery and the transfer of babies in and out of the hospital has been stopped," the department said.
The department would continue with surveillance, having set up infection control sections in all 62 hospitals. The outbreak started last month.
"The cause of the outbreak is unknown at this stage until further analysis is done," said Sibongile Zungu, senior general manager for the Health Services Cluster responsible for the running and service delivery of all KwaZulu-Natal hospitals.
Klebsiella is a bacteria which occurs commonly in communities as well as in specialised units in hospitals.
"At hospitals it tends to be dangerous for two reasons. "It is usually of a more virulent strain and secondly it is usually very resistant to treatment. "It is an airborne infection very common in neonatal nurseries," the department said.
"In newborns (0 to 28 days old) it causes an overwhelming infection of the blood stream which results in multiple organ failure".
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