Superbugs

You know that socialist paradise in Britain? It’s killing people:

Nurses who didn’t wash their hands and left patients lying in soiled beds were cited in an official report blaming mismanagement for the deaths of 90 people who contracted a bacterial infection in hospitals in southern England.

“Significant failings” at all levels contributed to infections of more than 1,000 patients at three hospitals, the Healthcare Commission said Thursday.

The patients were infected with Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, which can cause diarrhea, colitis and other intestinal problems, officials said.

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The report into the spread of the highly contagious bacterium said nurses at three hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust were often too busy to wash their hands and left patients in their own excrement.

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In recent years, Britain’s superbug infection rates of bacteria like Clostridium difficile and MRSA have skyrocketed. In the 1990s, only five percent of in-hospital blood infections were from MRSA, the deadly bacteria resistant to nearly every available antibiotic. In past years, that figure has jumped to more than 40 percent.

Now, in fairness, these superbugs are popping up in American hospitals as well. It’s partly a result of indiscriminate use of antibiotics and patients refusing to take full doses of said antibiotics that have created these drug-resistant strains.

But it doesn’t help matters when your hospital are understaffed because of funding concerns. Or when nurses are simply turning sheets over between patients to save money.