The Directorate-General for Health today called on hospitals to reinforce infection prevention and control measures and carry out screening when admitting patients in view of the increase in cases of the multi-resistant bacteria “Klebsiella pneumoniae” in Europe.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned on Wednesday that the bacterium 'Klebsiella pneumoniae ST23' (hvKp) is increasing in Europe, with reported cases rising from 12 to 143 since 2021.
In a written response sent today to the Lusa agency, the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) stated that, at the date of this ECDC alert, Portugal had no reported cases.
He recommended, however, that “due to the emergence of these resistances worldwide”, all “prevention and control measures should be reinforced, as well as the means of diagnosis and laboratory monitoring”.
«Managers of health units must promote, in a consistent and solid manner, all the measures described in the DGS Standards, namely hand hygiene, basic precautions in infection control (with special focus on the decontamination of surfaces and equipment), precautions based on transmission routes (contact, fecal-oral)", says the DGS.
He also advised carrying out screenings upon admission of patients and during hospitalization the allocation of suspected or confirmed patients to individual rooms.
«Special attention must also be given to the most vulnerable patients, especially when transferring hospital care to the units of the Integrated Continuous Care Network», highlights the DGS.
The health authority highlights an increase in antibiotic-resistant enterobacterales strains in Portugal and highlights that the global rate of resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae increased from 2% to 11,6% between 2012 and 2020.
Like all Member States, Portugal adopts the Recommendations of the European Center for Disease Control, complying with European and Council guidelines, with the aim of consolidating the surveillance network for infections associated with healthcare, antimicrobial consumption and of resistance to antimicrobials.
In this context, says the DGS, «resistance profiles in invasive samples are monitored and reported, on an annual basis, validated by the Instituto Nacional Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA)»
The ECDC expressed concern about the increase from four to 10 in the number of countries with registered cases of infection with hvKp type 23, a hypervirulent bacterium that has increasingly acquired a variety of genes associated with resistance to last resort antibiotics used to treat serious infections.
The increase in cases of multidrug-resistant hvKp is “a cause for concern, due to the severity of the infections, combined with resistance to last-line antibiotics, which makes infections difficult to treat,” said Dominique Monnet, head of the Antimicrobial Resistance and Infections Associated with ECDC Healthcare, cited in a statement from the European organization.
“The spread of multidrug-resistant hvKp in healthcare settings is expected to result in increased mortality among vulnerable patient populations in these settings,” the organization warned.
The emergence of cases of hypervirulent bacteria combined with resistance to last-line antibiotics is considered worrying because, «in contrast to the 'classic' strains of 'Klebsiella pneumoniae', hvKp strains can cause serious infections in healthy individuals, often complicated by dissemination to various parts of the body», according to ECDC.
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