Baby contracted Indian superbug

A potentially lethal, highly drug-resistant superbug previously unheard of in Ireland, which infected eight people in a major hospital last year, was also diagnosed in a six-month-old baby.

A new report by Eurosurveillance, the peer-review medical journal, has found the highly dangerous klebsiella pnemoniae virus, which is normally found on the Indian sub-continent, was recorded in the infant in Dublin last May.

Just two months earlier, a similar outbreak of klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase infected seven patients at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick, and another in a long-stay facility in the Mid-West.

Unlike the vast majority of hospital infections, both viruses are resistant to penicillin and almost all antibiotics. Until last year they were unheard of in Ireland, with only a handful of cases reported anywhere in Europe.

A study published in the latest Eurosurveillance bulletin said that, in the immediate aftermath of the Limerick incidents, a further case was uncovered in a six-month-old Indian child in Dublin who came to Ireland at four months old.

The study — by Temple Street’s department of clinical microbiology, the HSE’s department of public health and specialists from NUI Galway — said the child was brought to the family GP in Dublin in May suffering from a sudden fever.

The infection was isolated and did not appear to spread further.

However, the study’s authors raised concerns over the appearance of the superbug in Ireland as the virus “represents a major threat to current approaches to treatment of life-threatening enterobacteriaceae infection”.

The superbug’s first European case in 2008 involved a Swedish patient who had been based in the Indian sub-continent. Since then, it has also been identified in British-based patients connected to India and Pakistan.

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