Superbug ‘epidemic’ in Vietnam hospitals a ‘wake up call’ to world, warns Swedish researcher

Resistant to multiple drugs, CRE infects 87 per cent of patients who spend two weeks in hospital, a study shows. Urgent steps are needed to stop it spreading

The intestinal bacteria, which spreads fastest in subtropical countries with limited health care resources, increases the risk of death from infections

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A baby gets treatment at a prenatal ward in Da Nang, Vietnam. The spread of drug-resistant bacteria CRE has reached “epidemic” levels in Vietnamese hospitals, a researcher warns, with infected newborns five times more likely to die than babies unaffected. Photo: Alamy

Published: 7:45pm, 11 Jul 2019Updated: 7:45pm, 11 Jul 2019

A deadly bacterial superbug has reached “epidemic” levels in Vietnamese hospitals in what scientists are calling a “wake up call” to the world.

More than half of hospital patients were found to be colonised with an intestinal bacteria resistant to a broad spectrum of antibiotics, in a study reported in the Journal of Infection.

Samples were taken from more than 2,200 patients across 63 wards, in 12 Vietnamese hospitals across the country, in the largest study of its kind. Scientists discovered the longer patients stayed in hospital the greater the risk they had of infection by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), also known as carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE).

One in eight patients were carriers of the bug when they were admitted to hospital, a figure which rose to seven in eight patients after two weeks in hospital.

A new study found that one in eight patients in Vietnam were carriers of the bug when they were admitted to hospital. Photo: Alamy

“We are in the middle of an epidemic, it is an alarm. This could be the tip of the iceberg,” warns lead researcher Hakan Hanberger, professor in the department of clinical and experimental medicine at Linkoping University, Sweden, and consultant in the infection clinic at Linkoping University Hospital. CRE carriers are at higher risk of contracting potentially fatal infections such as urinary tract infections, sepsis and pneumonia, although not all carriers become sick.