Dozens have died from difficult intestinal bacteria

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Several dozen people in Finland have died of diarrhoea caused by a difficult and antibiotic-resistant bacterium of the intestine known as Clostridium difficile.
      Although the capital area and the Kymenlaakso (Kymi Valley) region in the southeast appear to have passed the peak of the epidemic, more and more cases are still emerging in the Varsinais-Suomi (Finland Proper) area in the southwest of the country.
     
Hundreds of people have been affected by the outbreak, most of them from the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS). Things began to spiral out of control in November of last year.
      HUSLAB laboratory services have so far managed to classify by type around 1,300 strains of the Clostridium difficile bacteria. "The number of samples to be analysed is now on the decrease", says professor Martti Vaara of HUSLAB. Twenty per cent of the received samples are of the new and ferocious ribotype 027.
      "We had 67 new cases in November, 34 in January, and 16 in February", lists HUS specialist in infectious diseases Veli-Jukka Anttila.
      The situation in Helsinki is beginning to be under control, but in the areas of Porvoo, Hyvinkää, and Lohja the bacteria still continues to cause grief.
     
In the Kymi Valley area the bacteria has been found from 24 and in Finland Proper from around a hundred individuals.
      "There have been fewer and fewer occurrences in recent weeks", explains the Kymi Valley chief surgeon of infectious diseases Risto Pietikäinen.
      Some of the patients suffering from prolonged diarrhoea have started to recover.
      Eight of those who contracted the illness in this area have succumbed to it. Pietikäinen estimates that the new ribotype had to do with three or four of the deaths.
     
New cases are still emerging in Finland Proper.
      "We screen cases with a finer-toothed comb", explains Harri Marttila, doctor of infectious diseases from the Hospital District of Southwest Finland. "New cases will still be found for quite some time."
      The discovered cases have been from various areas within the district. The bacteria has so far caused the death of eight or nine individuals, Marttila estimates.
      "We have had this problem before, but in November the right kind of diagnostic tools were finally established", Marttila adds.
      Anttila agrees: "We examined more than 20 samples from 2005 and came across two positive cases."
     
The fatal cases - which can occur in one in ten of the ribotype 027 infections - are in the main restricted to elderly patients and those who are already hit with a range of illnesses.
      The pattern of mortality thus somewhat resembles that for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the so-called "hospital bacteria".


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish hospitals deficient in personnel specialized in infection prevention (5.11.2007)
  Intestinal bacteria blamed for three deaths in south of Finland (2.11.2007)

Links:
  Clostridium difficile (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat