Stewart Barbara: Inquiry into Hospital-Acquired Infection — Consideration of Report of Health Committee 
Stewart Barbara: Inquiry into Hospital-Acquired Infection — Consideration of Report of Health Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14655] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of the report of the Health Committee on the inquiry into hospital-acquired infection 
. It is really pleasing to see that at last hospital-acquired infection has been recognised and that procedures have been put in place to attempt to minimise those incidents. New Zealand First was very pleased to see in the Government’s response to the report of the Health Committee tabled in the House today that the Government agrees in principle with the recommendations of the report and is working towards the implementation of those recommendations. We were also pleased to see that the Government is working towards progressing—and I quote from the reply—“a national surveillance system for hospital-acquired infections”. The fact that there is not a nationwide standard and that data to date are not yet standardised across the sector means that it is not possible to evaluate and compare the rates of hospital-acquired infection between the district health boards. Unfortunately that is still not possible as different district health boards apply totally different standards. As outlined in the select committee report there needs to be consistency in data collection and reporting across the health sector. 
It was rather disturbing to read in the report that in New Zealand about 10 percent of the patients who are admitted to hospital will acquire an infection as a result of their stay there. Those infections pose a serious risk to both the patient and the staff and the figures are increasing. The select committee was told however that the percentage of those infections is very similar in hospital patients in other developed countries. In the United States hospital-acquired infection is the fourth-biggest cause of death behind heart disease strokes and cancer. It is absolutely essential that in New Zealand our statistics do not mirror that trend and that as much as possible is done to reduce the risks of the occurrence and transmission of hospital-acquired infections as well as to prevent and control infectious disease outbreaks. 
However increasingly the evidence shows that the rate of hospital-acquired infections is rising and that those infections are a real and persistent danger. The general public needs to be adequately informed about the hospital-acquired infections and the bloodstream infection rates in public hospitals. As pointed out in the select committee report the Ministry of Health’s website is the ideal place for that information. Of course it should be really easy for the reader to locate that information on that website. We need to reassure the public about the safety and quality of the public health system in New Zealand. People definitely do not want to have greater health problems in hospital than they had when they were initially admitted. 
It is thought—and I have looked on other websites—that hospital-acquired infections have a huge variety of causes. It may be that today’s hospitals contain a greater proportion than previously of people who are sicker who are older and who are likely to be hospitalised for longer. It may be that basic hygiene procedures and practices are not being followed. There is too the emergence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs that pose an extremely serious risk for our hospital patients and I understand that those superbugs are spreading within the system. That means that much stricter national standards of infection control are needed. It is also a dangerous situation because methicillin-resistant  
Staphylococcus aureus 
 bugs are resistant to at least three different classes of antibiotics. The bottom line is that if those bugs become resistant to further classes of antibiotics infections will become totally untreatable. Just recently we had examples of operations being cancelled and of the temporary closure of wards because a bug had infected patients and staff at many local hospitals right throughout the Wellington region. That totally disrupted hospital business for a large number of days and it tells us that infection control in some hospital wards needs to be reviewed. The situation definitely should not be like that in a First World health system. District health boards should be required to record in their annual reports the outbreaks of superbugs in their hospitals and their communities. 
In conclusion New Zealand First supports the three recommendations that were made by the Health Committee and commented on in the Government report tabled today and looks forward to the implementation of those recommendations.