The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has recommended the isolation of the remaining seven babies with Klebsiella pneumonia at the Tembisa Hospital, east of Johannesburg.
This comes after 17 babies contracted Klebsiella pneumonia, resulting in 10 of them dying in November and December last year.
The institute has called on the hospital to improve its infection prevention and control measures to minimise chances of a further spread of the infection.
The NICD’s Dr Nelesh Govender, “We’ve recommended that all babies infected with this particular pathogen be isolated so that they are nursed in a separate section of the unit so that there’s less chance of transmission in the unit. As far as I know, there’s no sharing of incubators or cots. When the bed occupancy increases in the unit they just bring in more incubators and cots. Essentially what happens then is that the staff-patient ratio is just completely altered.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance in Gauteng says it is horrified that ten babies have died at Tembisa Hospital east of Johannesburg.
“It cannot be that babies die of Klebsiella. It’s not the first time this has happened in a Gauteng hospital. In 2018, six babies died at the Thelle Mogoerane hospital, now 10 babies died at the Tembisa Hospital. I’m very concerned that we only heard about this in the middle of January and we need a full inquiry, full accountability and we must make sure that it never ever happens at another hospital again. The problem is that most of the antenatal wards in Gauteng hospitals are overcrowded and short of staffed,” says the DA’s Jack Bloom.
