Second patient contracts Legionnaire’s disease while in hospital

A SECOND patient has picked up a potentially fatal respiratory disease from a shower head or water source in a hospital bathroom.

The South Eastern Health Board (SEHB) has received test results which indicate that a patient recently diagnosed with Legionnaire’s disease most likely acquired the infection at St Luke’s General Hospital, Kilkenny.

The possible source has been traced back to a shower head or sink in the bathroom he was using. It had initially been thought he picked up the disease in the community. The man, who remains in hospital and is seriously ill with another condition, in addition to Legionnaire’s, was diagnosed with the infection on March 29. An immediate probe began both in the hospital and within the man’s community to try to trace the infection source.

The seriously-ill man is the second patient in the region to pick up the disease while in hospital. On April 27 last year, 61-year-old Ena Kiely, a mother of seven, died at Waterford Regional Hospital. She had suffered from Crohn’s disease. A subsequent probe found she had picked up Legionnaire’s from either a shower head or a tap in the en-suite bathroom of her hospital room.

In a statement last night, the SEHB said the latest case in Kilkenny was rare and isolated because the patient was prone to infection due to the therapy he was receiving for a long-standing condition. The man is believed to have had a transplant in the past. “The SEHB tests atypical pneumonia samples for the presence of legionella in an effort to identify quickly any patient with Legionnaire’s disease so that the most effective treatment can be offered,” the statement read.

Results of specific tests on the cultures from the patient, and from a showerhead and water from the bathroom used by the patient, were indistinguishable. A health board spokesperson stressed it was not fair to say they matched.