GUAGUA, Pampanga- The panic was totally baseless.
This was essentially the message of the chief of the Diosdado Macapagal Memorial Hospital here following reports of unfounded panic among folk of this town reacting to the recent discovery of a deadly bacteria in a patient that led to the declaration of an “emergency status” at the hospital.
The hospital resumed full operations last Wednesday after it was shut down for seven days for a massive disinfection that followed the hospitalization of the infected patient last Sept. 15.
In an interview with Punto, hospital chief Dr. Eddie Ponio lamented reports of “panic” among Guagua residents some of whom reportedly kept off their children from school.
“It was a simple mandatory emergency measure, and not a calamity that was undertaken. There was absolutely no reason at all for panic,” he said.
He said that the infected patient, who was initially brought to the hospital for burns sustained from electrocution, is out of danger and will not contaminate others.
Ponio ordered the hospital virtually shut down last Sept. 15 after the burn wounds of the patient indicated infection of the bacteria “Pseudomonas aeruginosa.”
“The patient was treated in both the emergency and operating rooms which are critical parts of the hospital, so we decided to shut down the hospital until we have fully decontaminated it,” he said.
He said, however, that the bacteria apparently did not infect the bloodstream of the patient, whom he declined to identify.
"He was allowed to go home but is still undergoing treatment. Now he is more in need of constructive surgery for the deformities caused by the electrocution,” he said.
Ponio said that after the case was discovered, he ordered that recuperating patients be either sent home or transferred to the Escolastica Romero Hospital in Lubao. He said that his hospital has only five private rooms but maintains 100 beds in its wards.
He described the bacteria as “an opportunistic pathogen which exploits some break in the host defenses to initiate an infection.”
Ponio said that contamination could result only from direct contact with an infected person.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection is a serious problem in patients hospitalized with cancer, cystic fibrosis, and burns. The case fatality rate in these patients is near 50 percent, he added.
