The original article can be found in: The Barbados Advocate By Patricia Thangaraj
Three cases of Klebsiella Pneumonia have been identified in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
Word of this came from Dr. Clyde Cave, Head of the Paediatrics Department, who spoke at a press conference yesterday to let Barbadians know what is occurring.
“As far as identification, we have had three samples that have identified this particular strain. Because of the nature of the germ and the nature of our patients, we know that this is very severe.”
He said that he would not like to comment any further on the specifics of the infection because they still need to carry out more tests.
“While we have identified the organism, we have not completed an investigation so that I could have something that was the definite cause and effect. Right now, it is just a concern and a serious concern because of the nature of the infection.”Dr. Cave said that so far, they have identified one particular strain of this type of Pneumonia. “Klebsiella Pneumonia has many different strains and we identify it based on differences between them. Those differences only really become important when they are resistant to antibiotics because that is what we depend on to treat it if the organisms are causing a problem.”
He said that healthy persons could have Klebsiella in their bodies, but it would not cause a problem. However, if the individual was sick, then it sometimes might cause an issue and this is the case with the young ones in the NICU.“When a new strain emerges, we tend to identify it first in sick individuals but in our NICU, all the individuals in there are already sick, so it is a little bit difficult to say if the infection is the sole cause of what is going on because there are other things affecting them – other comorbidities.”
Dr. Cave stated that there would be an issue if the antibiotics being used were not working. However, the antibiotics that they are using are helping these three children.
“If it did cause them a problem and we identified it, we would treat it with an antibiotic and all would be well. If we identify a strain where not all of the antibiotics work, then that is where we start to be really concerned because there might come a problem at sometime where we have nothing to treat it. This strain in the NICU, we do have an antibiotic identified that works against it and we have used that antibiotic so with time, hopefully, we would be able to minimise and contain these infections.”
Dr. Cave added that this strain of Klebsiella Pneumonia is quite common and pervasive, so persons do not need to get into the same situation as SARS, which is an “unusual organism” that persons have to be worried about it spreading.
Instead, what needs to be done is to protect those that are vulnerable and to ensure that they evaluate their practices not only at the QEH, but throughout the island.
