United States: Officials in Mexico announced on Tuesday that seventeen children in central Mexico have evaporated from what is believed to be contaminated IV feeding bags, and four more deaths have been reported.
More about the news
The country’s public health secretary, David Kershenobich, confirmed that sixteen of the victims were underweight, premature babies who were being treated at hospitals; the other victim was 14 years old.
He claimed that two types of bacteria, including a multi-drug resistant bug, had caused the deaths.
Police stated that the bacterial contamination appears to have occurred at a plant in the city of Toluca that produces the IV nutrition mixture, that the manufacturing company has been closed temporarily, and the product has been withdrawn, ABC News reported.
The first cases of the infection were recorded beginning on the 22nd of November, and the latest was recorded on the 3rd of December.
About twenty other patients had been affected by the infection as they received treatment for the same.
About fatalities
Each of the first thirteen fatalities reportedly happened in three government hospital settings and one private hospital in the State of Mexico, just outside Mexico City.
Moreover, Kershenobich, who did not expect any other deaths, noted that other officials had “detected other possible outbreaks with similar characteristics in Mexico State, which are under investigation.”
Three more fatalities have been confirmed to have happened in the neighboring state of Michoacan and another in the north-central state of Guanajuato.
Officials stated that the same bacteria and the same IV bags were involved in all the deaths.
Earlier, the federal Public Health Department instructed physicians all over the country not to employ intravenous nutrition bags manufactured by the company Productos Hospitalarios S.A de C.V., though all the sources of the infections have not been identified.
Phone calls to other numbers listed for the company, as well as a number of emails sent requesting comment, were not returned.
This seemed to have been a bacterium known as the Klebsiella oxytoca and the Enterobacter cloacae, both of which lead to bloodstream infections in the babies, ABC News reported.
It was the latest public blow to Mexico’s poor and ill-funded healthcare sector, which has been struggling to provide adequate care.
According to Dr. Jorge Gaspar, the hospital’s director, added that
budget cuts “have affected the acquisition of supplies necessary for the institution’s functioning.”