Pat's Notes:

Yes, its an alarming headline, but it seems that I'm not the only one
to have been watching the Hamilton Spectator and the cases of human
C.Diff coming in from Niagra - on the border with New York State.

The pigs are sick and Ontario's hospitals are going under with
covered-up  C.Diff epidemics. We now know that it is an especially
dangerous strain hitting humans and killing large numbers.

It sounds like the 027 that was a killer in East Anglia.

We know that the pigs have been sick with PMWS in Canada for years.
MRSA in pigs and pork has now been admitted in Canada and the US.

Britain still denies that the pigs have MRSA. and are only just
admiting the existence and seriousness of the 1999 PMWS mutation.

Why?

We already know that human MRSA cases of the indentifiable piggy
strain have been found in New York state.

Too many co-incidences, too many cover-ups, too many corrupt British
vets running amok. Too many live exports from Britain during a secret
epidemic.

Anyway the investigators have the archives of uk.business.agriculture
to trace the source and the responsibility.

http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/07/secretive-liberals-hide-from-c-diff.html

Right in Niagara

Looking from Canada to the States across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Friday, July 4, 2008
Secretive Liberals hide from C. Diff accountability 
Naomi Powell and Joan Walters wrote in “463 C. DIFF. DEATHS, 22
HOSPITALS, 2 YEARS”, (Hamilton Spectator, July 4, 2008):

"Figures from a fraction of Ontario hospitals hint at how enormous the
scope of lethal superbug outbreaks may turn out to be .

At least 460 patients infected with the lethal superbug C. difficile
have died in Ontario hospitals over the past 30 months.

A tally by The Spectator shows that 463 infected patients died at just
22 of Ontario's 157 hospitals. The deaths occurred between January
2006 and May 2008.

New figures compiled by the newspaper show C. diff has assaulted more
hospitals and claimed more lives than previously known.

Health Minister David Caplan, who replaced George Smitherman last
month, has said the government has no plans to call an inquiry.

Families and opposition politicians have criticized the Liberals for
failing to take more aggressive action since a lethal strain of C.
diff arrived in Ontario in 2006.

Conservative Leader John Tory said yesterday the rising deaths
reconfirm the need for a probe into the full scope of C. diff.

Both Burlington's Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital and Barrie's Royal
Victoria Hospital have been hard hit by C. diff. In Burlington, 91
patients infected with the bacterium died, 62 of them directly from
the bug. In Barrie, 51 infected patients died, 24 directly as a result
of C. diff.

No one in the provincial government has ever tabulated the full number
of deaths from the bug.
Ontario's chief medical officer of health has so far been able to
confirm only 22 outbreaks in 19 hospitals from November 2006 to May
2008, but does not know the number who died in those incidents.

Experts such as infection specialist Dr. Michael Gardam have said The
Spectator's ongoing tally of C. diff cases is only the tip of the
iceberg.

Some hospitals have not declared outbreaks, but have reported
significant numbers of deaths.


 [click on chart to enlarge]

Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital says 27 patients infected with C.
diff died from January 2007 to April 2008. C. diff was cited as a
factor in 17 of the deaths.

Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor had 37 deaths from C. diff from
April 2006 to March 2008.

Data on C. diff prevalence in Ontario is scant because the superbug
has never been a reportable disease. C. diff has been blamed for 2,000
deaths in Quebec.

Hospitals use a variety of methods to collect information on C. diff
and to decide whether an official outbreak should be declared. That
all changes Sept. 30 when mandatory reporting begins.

Dr. Michael Baker, the Ontario patient safety adviser in charge of
designing the reporting system, says there will be a standard
definition for what constitutes an outbreak. But there is no intention
to require hospitals to report deaths.

Baker says that's because determining whether C. diff caused or
contributed to a death is a complicated procedure that relies on the
individual judgment of the expert looking at the case.
Hospitals like Jo Brant and Royal Victoria have called in outside
specialists to look back through charts to determine which cases were
directly linked to C. diff.

Baker, physician-in-chief of Toronto's University Hospital Network,
says he is "aware of the difficulty in making that judgment" and does
not believe requiring hospitals to report deaths would be productive.

Few of Ontario's hospitals have gone through a chart examination to
determine numbers of deaths. However, as public concern escalates,
many hospitals are voluntarily tabulating their fatalities.

The Spectator's previous C. diff tally showed 264 deaths at seven
hospitals since 2006.

In the chart , 22 institutions have voluntarily disclosed the number
of patients infected with C. diff who died in their hospitals since
2006.

Not all hospitals had complete data, and some hospitals reported data
for only a short timeframe, such as during an official outbreak. The
majority of the deaths have been linked directly to the disease, but
some patients died of other factors while infected.

The Spectator surveyed an additional eight hospitals that either
reported no deaths or had insufficient data. They are not counted.”

*

So - now 463 C.diff deaths (that are known at this point) have
occurred in Ontario under McGuinty’s secretive Liberals.

Can St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley confirm these figures? Can
Bradley answer whether the NHS has "gone through a chart examination
to determine the number of deaths" over the last two years caused by
C. Diff? Will Bradley ask for that information? Will the NHS
'voluntarily tabulate its C. Diff fatalities'?

When the Hamilton Spectator wrote “Some hospitals have not declared
outbreaks, but have reported significant numbers of deaths”, once
again, I was reminded of the CIHI study in Nov. of 2007 which revealed
that the St. Catharines hospital, part of the Niagara Health System,
had the third-highest patient death-rate in Canada.

Despite writing to my MPP, St. Catharines Liberal Jim Bradley, several
times on this very issue-

- asking him for clarification, a smug and arrogant Jim Bradley has
refused to answer any of my concerns.

The Liberals cooked up some kind of “governance review’’ (see: Liberal
health-care action: reviewing the reviews ) of the NHS, but no-one has
said a word since about Niagara’s high hospital mortality-rate!!

Were any of these CIHI-uncovered deaths in Niagara C. Diff-related? Do
we really know how many C. Diff deaths occurred in Niagara – was
anyone keeping track? How can we find out, when the local MPP, Jim
Bradley, ignores the issue and refuses to talk about it?

No Liberal has yet publicly explained the causes of CIHI’s St.
Catharines findings.

Former health minister Smitherman even said that there was a spending
free-for-all going on in Niagara’s hospital system! (See: Liberals
claim medicare is a "free-for-all": so they cut hospital beds and
nurses! , Apr.10, 2008; also, see: Liberals ignore call for
health-monopoly investigation , Jan.12, 2008)

There is scant little in the local press mentioning Jim Bradley and
his Liberal health-care system – no comments, no explanations … it is
as if the elusive Jim Bradley has vanished on this issue.

Perhaps the Hamilton Spectator can also look into the situation in
Niagara.

Worried, secretive Liberals have stonewalled the Ombudsman; I had
asked Jim Bradley, in a letter sent to him on Dec.31, 2007, to allow
the Ombudsman to investigate the Liberal’s health-monopoly (see:
Ombudsman must investigate Liberal health monopoly ).

On Jun.18, 2008 I sent Bradley a letter asking that the Ombudsman be
allowed to investigate the MUSH sector – including the Liberal-run
health system. (see: Time to investigate Liberal health-care system:
Stale Smitherman should resign.)

I repeated my call for an Ombudsman investigation in a letter sent to
Bradley on Jun.27, 2008 (see: McGuinty's Liberal health-care gulag)
and also in a letter sent to Bradley on July 2, 2008 (see:An Ombudsman
'C. diff' investigation would be kryptonite for McGuinty's Liberals )

Jim Bradley, the thirty-year MPP and supposed populist
political-savant, has said nothing at all about the C. Diff outbreak
which has transpired under his Liberal's rule.

Jim Bradley has ignored any inquiries about this issue that I have
brought to his attention.

How can we hold these arrogant Liberals to account? By indicting them?

Are Ontario hospitals even safe between now and September 30? And what
then -will "mandatory reporting" somehow put an end to further
outbreaks?! Or are there other reasons behind this outbreak which the
Liberals don't want the public to know about?

How are we supposed to find out what's going on in this Liberal
health-care monopoly?

What are Jim Bradley and his Liberals hiding? 

-- 
Regards
Pat Gardiner
Release the results of testing British pigs for MRSA and C.Diff now!
www.go-self-sufficient.com