Nasty superbug discovered in Melbourne hospital

TIM PALMER: There are new concerns about antibiotic resistant superbugs emerging in Australian hospitals after it emerged that a Melbourne hospital has been contaminated with one.

A report in the Medical Journal of Australia today details the outbreak at Dandenong Hospital where 10 patients were infected.

None of them died from the bacteria and the hospital says it now has the contamination under control. But the head of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases, David Looke, says it's an increasing problem.

He's speaking here to Rachel Carbonell.

DAVID LOOKE: I'm not surprised. And I'm not surprised because these incidences occur in many hospitals around the country, on and off. And I think that what's new is this particular bug is so resistant to antibiotics that it was worth reporting.

We've been seeing other gram-negatives sometimes contaminate the environments or patients in intensive care units. And from my brief reading of this report, it looks like they've investigated and been lucky to the find the likely source and they've worked out a way of dealing with it.

RACHEL CARBONELL: So this particular bacteria is commonly referred to as CRE. What is it and why is it such a problem, why is it such a worry?

DAVID LOOKE: Well CRE stands for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. The carbapenems are the class of antibiotics that are really our last line of treatment that are safe to give to patients for these types of germs. These types of germs are commonly E.coli is the commonest member of that class.

And once you've got an E.coli that's resistant to carbapenems, it's usually resistant to all the other common antibiotics too. And what you're left with is one or two experimental or very old fashioned antibiotics that are very toxic to use.

So we don't like the idea of those bugs spreading around and causing infections because they're virtually impossible to treat.

RACHEL CARBONELL: You said earlier that these kinds of outbreaks of superbugs are happening periodically in Australian hospitals, but this is a particularly nasty bug. What does it say about Australia's vulnerability to antibiotic resistant bugs?

DAVID LOOKE: Well I think we're very vulnerable. We know that these particular organisms have become very prevalent in many of the countries around us, in Asia, because of the widespread use of antibiotics in the environments and farming and food production. And lots of the hospitals over there have got big outbreaks of these multi-drug resistant organisms.

But the thing we're most concerned with is we're starting to see these bugs occur in the community. So periodically people are coming in carrying or with infections by multi-resistant bugs and we haven't seen that before. It's always been like this issue, a hospital issue where you've been thinking that, you know, very sick patients together with lots and lots of antibiotics being used together create an environment where resistance can be developed.

TIM PALMER: The head of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases, David Looke.   ABCNews