Something new in the case of infants who died at Chambéry hospital in early December. The first analyzes carried out by three laboratories on the suspect batch of food bags supplied to the establishment reveal the presence of infectious bacteria which could have caused the death of the newborns.
In a letter unveiled by Liberation, Dr Michel Deiber, head of the neonatology service in Chambéry indicates that “6 bags are contaminated by a gram negative bacillus (awaiting confirmation on the germ) and also have a very high level of endotoxins “.
These bags made by the Marette laboratory in Calvados are similar to those used to feed newborns who died at the neonatology service in Chambéry. They would therefore be “the probable cause [de leurs] deaths occurring in the service “, continues the doctor.
To these 6 bags, we must therefore add the 3 bags at the origin of the infection of infants. In all 9 bags would therefore have been contaminated by this bacterium, before the arrival of the bags at the hospital according to Dr. Deiber. He ensures that the 6 bags analyzed were “intact” and were not used by the neonatal intensive care unit.
Infants are now known to have died from “very sudden septic shock”, acute circulatory failure secondary to bacterial infection.
A still unknown germ
What do we know about this bacteria? Not much at the moment. “To date, the formal identification of the germ has not been confirmed” and “the isolated strains” will be analyzed by the Institut Pasteur in Paris. While waiting for the laboratory’s response scheduled for the week, we are talking about a “rare germ, which seems difficult to identify”, an “environmental enterobacterium” which can cause various infections, in the words of the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine, quoted by AFP.
The production of the Marette laboratory, which manufactures the incriminated food bags, has been suspended. 137 bags in seven hospitals were removed.
