Vaccine To Fight Deadly Hospital Super Bugs In Ten Years

The government’s chief medical officer for UK, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson on Sunday announced that the vaccine capable of fighting against two deadly hospital bugs -- MRSA and C.difficile will be made available within next 10 years.

According to the UK’s Department of Health, shot will be available for bug, clostridium difficile in 5 years while jab against MRSA will be ready by year 2018.

Sir Donaldson in his report, which will be officially published today, said that immunisations against deadly hospital bugs could help to reduce the risk to patients and could be used in two ways.

He told The Observer, “One would be protecting the individual, somebody who was going into hospital for a major operation.”

“The other way of looking at it would be to try to interrupt the chain of transmission - to study the pattern of infection in the community, in hospitals and nursing homes, and try to eradicate the pools of infection,” Sir Donaldson added.

He also stressed that the infection control measures, such as washing hands frequently by health care providers and nurses and maintaining hygiene should remain intact as the danger of emergence of other infections would always be present.

"You might be able to get close to eliminating them [with a vaccine]. But if you didn't concentrate on hygiene measures, something else would come along to replace them," he said.

In year 2005 and 2006, the two deadly bugs were the contributing factors in more than 8,000 Britons death. But the latest figures reveal that the rates of both infections are falling.

The latest flu vaccines are just 3 years away, the report will also mention.

Acambis, a British biotech firm, presently developing the vaccine against bug, C. diff claims that the jab is safe.

Clostridium difficile, also known as C. difficile is a bacterium which causes watery diarrhea, often with nausea and abdominal paindefine and cramping, in some cases people develop colitis or pseudomembranous colitis. It is one of the most common infections but less deadly than MRSA and has shown signs of dropping recently.

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, commonly knowna as "staph.” It commonly causes cellulites and skin infections but in severe cases may cause bone infection (osteomyelitis) or infection of the bloodstream. The people with weak immune systemdefine or elderly people are at much higher risk of MRSA.

The good news is that in the past 2 years, the incidence of MRSA has been coming down, although recently MRSA have shown signs of stalling at just above 4,000 cases per quarter in UK. However, the government is positive it will meet its target to halve rates in the present year based on a 2004 baseline.

On one hand, Northern Ireland and Wales have lower rates of infection while on the other hand, infection rate is much higher in scotland. In the first week of this month, a report was published by the Health Protection Scotland (HPS) which showed that a large number of elderly people have been diagnosed with the deadly super bug C.Diff or Clostridium Difficile in Scotland.

The new figures revealed that 1,861 cases of C.Diff were diagnosed among the people above 65 years between January and March of 2008, which was an increase of 16% on the previous quarter. Alexandria’s Vale of Leven hospital in Dunbartonshire saw the most recent outbreak where 50 patients got infected with C.Diff and 9 of those patients died in the last six months only.

The latest report though proved that the number of cases throughout the whole nation has perked up despite the fact that 88% of doctors and medical staffs were washing their hands regularly, as compared to the 68 percent from previous year.