A little-publicised fact among the soundbites centring on healthcare in Portugal is the fact that this relatively small country leads European rankings in hospital infections, with more than 100 deaths due to infections ‘picked up in hospitals’ per month.
SIC Notícias’ documentary programme ‘Essencial’ focused on the situation last night, opening its investigation with the acknowledgement that going to hospital should be synonymous with ‘a safe place’ – “but there is always a potential risk”.
Portugal’s high level of deaths from hospital infections is nothing ‘new’, Essencial stressed. It has been like this for “recent decades” (in line with situations in most other countries) – and much of the problem lies in the excessive use of antibiotics.
Portugal’s dismal ranking is not helped by the increasingly-common practice of ‘automedication’: people who believe they ‘know what they need’ and somehow manage to get hold of antibiotics when what they are actually trying to treat is not a bacteria at all, but a virus (for which antibiotics are not usually prescribed). The result is that, inadvertently, by consuming antibiotics when they don’t need them, people are building ‘greater resistance’ to this type of medication – which means that when a moment comes that they have a bacterial infection that requires an antibiotic, the antibiotic often does not ‘work’.
“In hospitals, each admission has become a form of Russian roulette that could hit any patient, especially the most vulnerable”, explains Essencial.
The case of Benedito Pacheco
Benedito Pacheco came into contact with a bacteria while interned in hospital following an accident in which he had broken his foot. He had arrived in hospital in the early hours of a Friday morning. After spending the weekend in the A&E department, the moment arrived for surgery – but when the results of pre-surgical tests came through, surgery had to be delayed because he had contracted a bacteria over the weekend – and that infection ended up seeing him spend three months in isolation in Hospital Garcia de Orta…
As SIC’s documentary explained: “What happened to Benedito happens to one in every 10 patients admitted to hospital. Portugal is the country of the European Union with the greatest estimated incidence of hospital infections.”
In a year in which complaints about the standards and service in the SNS state health system are never far from daily news bulletins, Essencial “contacted the general-health directorate and the ministry of health to ask what was planned to reduce the number of hospital infections – but did not receive any response.” The reason? “Patients (being treated) on stretchers in hospital corridors, reduced healthcare teams and excessive workload mean that procedures to avoid hospital infections are not prioritised”. This in itself is short-sighted, the reporting team posits: “Cost-cutting measures have not been taking into account the higher costs caused by hospital-acquired infections” – particularly when it is generally accepted that 70% of infections contracted in hospitals COULD be avoided if extra care and attention was taken with simple matters of basic hygiene (this extends to ‘hospital visitors’ who sometimes ‘bring infections’ with them, unwittingly).
“Who is being held accountable for these failings? And who should be held accountable for them?
“These are ‘essential’ questions for which answers are still lacking”, the report concludes.
Source material: SIC Notícias
