The Châlon hospital must manage a state of crisis. He is confronted with a superbug. The patient carrying the NDM-1 bacterium was detected at the Reims hospital center in mid-July when he was integrated into the intensive care unit. This establishment then informed the hospital of Châlons-en-Champagne where the patient was already followed in internal medicine.
The “superbug”, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase) carries a resistance gene that has spread to species of pathogenic bacteria responsible for dysentery, but also cholera. Resistant to all antibiotics, it is considered extremely dangerous by experts and has been monitored since 2009 by health professionals.
“This bacterium arrived in Chalons by importation. The patient was hospitalized in Vietnam and was returning from there. In addition, he went regularly to Algeria. It does not come from the hospital”, specifies in the newspaper the Union, the head of the hygiene service at Châlons hospital, Vincent Stoeckel.
The Chalon hospital contacted the 200 people who were in contact with the carrier patient, so that they could be screened by a simple stool analysis. This precautionary measure has been put in place to prevent possible spread.
“To date, all of the screenings carried out on patients present in the establishment have not found the presence of this bacterium”, indicated the management of the Châlons hospital in a press release. “The risk of being a carrier for ‘contact’ patients is low. The fact of becoming a carrier has no consequence on the state of health of the patients”, specified the hospital.
