SUPERINTENDENT REPORTS ON HOSPITAL INFECTIONS

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28284, 23 May 1957, Page 11

SUPERINTENDENT REPORTS ON HOSPITAL INFECTIONS

Exodus and Job are quoted by Dr. T. Morton, the Medical Superintendent of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, in support of his contention that staphylococcal infections have been with man as far back as can be ascertained.

He was answering, in his monthly report to the board, a question asked by Miss M. B. Howard, MJ 1 ., at the April meeting. “Why,” asked Miss Howard, “with the prevalence of staphylococcal infection in hospitals, has the use of antibiotics in Christchurch Hospital diminished?” “As Long as Ascertained” “It needs to be emphasised,” said Dr. Morton in reply, “that the staphylococcus aureus, which is at present the most troublesome cause of hospital and nursery infections, has been living on and with man and other animals as far back as can be ascertained. “In Exodus there is mentioned a plague of boils and blains, and in Job that he was sore stricken with boils from sole to crown. Ancient skeletons show undoubted evidence of old in-

fection by the staphylococcus,” Dr. Morton said.

In a recent survey of scattered New Guinea, families never before in contact with white men, staphylococci were found in the noses and on the skins of a number of persons, he said. Faced with antibiotics, the staphylococcus, probably more than any other organism, had developed or recaptured its hitherto latent capacity for resistance to the lethal action on it of penicillin and later other antibiotics. “Staphylococcal infection in the main is invited by debility in a patient, by damage, often trivial, of the skin, by surgical incisions, by skin diseases, and by lack oi immunity such as occurs in the newly-born. “In the vast majority of cases infection is trivial and localised.” Further, said Dr. Morton, it was doubtful whether staphylococci were more numerous m hospitals today than they were in the past. Use of Antibiotics Experience showed that, ideally, antibiotics should be used only when it had been ascertained that the infecting organism was sensitive to them; that in a few cases it was permissible to use an antibiotic where urgency and life-saving demanded it before bacteriological tests were completed; and that certain antibiotics killed off organisms in tne alimentary tract necessary to 1 the human economy, and resistant organisms might invade an undisputed field to cause dangerous enterocolitis. “This experience has resulted in the more careful use of antibiotics and the reduction in their use, particularly in the case of aureomycin, terramycin and achromycin.” No measures, however meticulously carried out, would rid hospitals of staphylococci, for they were being repeatedly introduced from outside. “In time, and it may take a long time, man’s immunity will be raised by natural processes, to meet attacks by the resistant staphylococcus, and he will regain the unstable equilibrium with this organism he held before the introduction of antibiotics,” Dr. Morton said.