THE General Hospital has seen a rise in antibiotic-resistant infections caused by inappropriately-prescribed antibiotics, it has emerged.
Speaking at a meeting of the Health Advisory Board, non-executive director and leading GP Dame Clare Gerada said the Quality, Safety and Improvement Committee was “quite concerned about the rise of C. difficile”.
C. difficile is an antibiotic-resistant infection with symptoms including diarrhoea.
Dame Clare explained: “It’s almost entirely down to inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics.”
The Hospital saw 20 cases of C. difficile in 2024, an increase from the 15 cases seen in 2023 – and the themes linking them were high antibiotic use, delayed sampling, and an increase in the use of laxatives and proton pump inhibitors.
In one case, cross-infection was found to be the root cause.
There were two cases of C. difficile in December, and the Hospital has since introduced “enhanced infection prevention”.
This revelation was “timely”, Dame Clare said, as the Health Department was about to switch to a new technology which monitors how drugs are prescribed.
The Blueteq software should show where the inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions are happening, she explained, backed by medical director Simon West.
The JEP’s sister publication Bailiwick Express requested figures surrounding C. difficile as well as other infections in December via a request under the Freedom of Information Law, but the deadline has been extended until 11 February.
The board yesterday heard that there were no cases of MRSA, MSSA, E. coli, and Pseudomonas bacteraemia in December.
