A lady I know well took care of her father after he was admitted to hospital. He had surgery, very successfully, and was discharged. A

weird looking boil-like thing appeared. He was seen again at hospital, not in the ward and it was supposedly treated. He went back home. He in fact had a terrible and possibly life threatening infection. Infected matter oozed from his wounds in great quantities.

The family was petrified. It was horrific. It was MRSA though this lady was not told or warned. After weeks of hassling and pressure she found out it was MRSA. She had to hassle and pressure to get the hospital to do a swab test to see what it was. And then they withheld the result from her for way longer than was decent!

They only told her officially 10 weeks later. In the meantime she and others at home, who were doing their damn best to save their father from dying, could have been very badly infected. One doctor (not a hospital one) just told her that her dad might not last long. She wouldn’t accept that. She fought and fought, got the treatment and eight months later he was in the clear. Her aim was never to sue the hospital, (she knew she would never win anyway), but she remains puzzled about all the secrecy and the lack of information about the very serious reality of MRSA in our hospital. And it is not a small problem. It is a big one. The big question is, why aren’t patients told?

Why the secrecy about MRSA in our hospital? Why aren’t patients tested automatically post op or is that not feasible? Why, if there are the symptoms, aren’t patients or family told immediately so they at least can protect themselves too? Why aren’t patients told when they are discharged to look out for these symptoms and to report back for treatment if so? And why isn’t there more isolation of these cases? Probably that is difficult in a hospital like St Luke’s that has so many large wards. Why isn’t everyone there washing their hands with the right solutions all the time?

What is MRSA? It is a harmless organism that is found on the skin of many individuals but can cause immense harm if it gets inside the body. MRSA describes examples of this organism that are resistant to the antibiotics we commonly use. It’s very nasty. People can die and do. A two-day-old baby recently became Britain’s youngest victim of this very nasty bug. A league table in this paper some weeks ago showed that our (Malta) rates of infection are the worst in Europe, only surpassed by Romania. Whereas in Norway the rate is 0.5 per cent, in Sweden 1 per cent and in Germany 22 per cent, our rate is a shameful 55.1 per cent, only topped by Romania’s even more dire 61.4 per cent. (MRSA rates as a proportion of blood infections 2005)

It seems we only pick up on the good news when Malta is reported in our media. The bad news should be picked up too, or are there things we do not want the public to know? News that we are the happiest nation on earth, or in Europe or in the Northern hemisphere… anyway we all know statistics can be presented in many different ways, a point which caused the bloodiest Bondiplus programme I have ever seen. But this article is not about Bondiplus or disagreements over statistics and their uses, but about MRSA, the super bug that is very present, if not omnipresent, in our hospital, although our media gives it very little, if no attention.

We presumably have such a bad infection rate for a host of reasons primarily because we are not treating this as a very serious health issue, which it certainly is. The public knows very little about it so there is no outcry. Living in Malta one would think that only our building mania causes problems or is a health risk. Mind you, we are not the only casual ones. The Brits are pretty close to us too, with an awful infection rate of 43.6 per cent though it is nowhere near as bad as us, but basically Britain and two of her former colonies, Cyprus and Malta, have the dubious honour of being the worst offenders in Europe (bar Romania) as far as this incredibly nasty killer bug is concerned.

Other countries have faced the problem head on and have lowered infection rates. The Brits and we appear to have taken a far more lackadaisical approach to the problem. Perhaps because we have been planning the move to the new hospital for years, it was not thought necessary to treat this as the serious emergency it is. However, it seems that unless we change our practises this bug will appear again and flourish again, even in our much-vaunted new hospital. This is the kind of issue I wish unions would deal with more because it is a real staff and patient protection issue, not how much one heart consultant was paid or how much they are being informed of every stage of the move to the new hospital, which really is others responsibility to manage.

And how to tackle it? The move to the new hospital will help though we must not sit on our laurels. The main issue is cleanliness apparently, so better practices must be adopted and enforced. Overcrowded hospitals contribute to higher infection rates too. Staff, under pressure to reduce waiting list’s end up taking shortcuts on hygiene and this must be avoided. Hopefully our new hospital will have higher hygiene standards. Hopefully our new hospital will have the rooms to isolate infected people.

And hopefully patients who are infected in future will be treated with the utmost respect, which includes informing them honestly of the problem and giving them the appropriate treatment. Not too much to ask is it?

marisaml@onvol.net