• How hospitals, nursing homes keep lethal ‘superbug’ outbreaks #secret
    http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-uncounted-outbreaks

    Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are sickened and tens of thousands die from infections by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and C. difficile, a pathogen linked to long-term antibiotic use. Timely reporting of outbreaks of these infections is essential to stopping the spread of disease and saving lives, public health experts and patient advocates say.

    Yet the United States lacks a unified nationwide system for reporting and tracking outbreaks. Instead, a patchwork of state laws and guidelines, inconsistently applied, tracks clusters of the deadly infections that the federal government 15 years ago labeled a grave threat to public health.

    As a result, the United States has no way to count the deadly spikes in infections that hit the nation. Reuters, drawing on reports from 29 state health departments, has assembled one of the most comprehensive counts yet - identifying at least 300 superbug outbreaks around the nation from 2011 to 2016. The number of people affected was impossible to determine because many reports didn’t include a count of the infected or the dead.

    #résistance_aux_antibiotiques #infection #santé