Fraser Health teams up with SFU to learn more about deadly super bugs

Fraser Health has partnered with Simon Fraser University to fight the super villain of the health-care world.

Super bugs—AKA the “nightmare bacteria”—are germs that have become so resistant to antibiotics, few medications can stop them.

The worst culprit among these is the Clostridioides difficile infection, or C. difficile, which attacks people who are immunocompromised or have recently been treated with antibiotics. It can increase the risk of death among these patients, leading to longer hospital visits and difficulty in treatment.

Fraser Health is working with SFU to analyze and understand C. difficile—samples from infected patients at Abbotsford Regional Hospital will be sent to SFU researchers, who will extract and decode the DNA of the bacteria.

The pilot project will run over the next year and researchers are hoping the results will lead to a better understanding of how patients acquire and transmit the infection.

It’s a common infection in all hospitals, and Fraser Health hospitals follow “robust infection prevention and control measures” to keep patients and staff safe. Still, with many patients on antibiotics for different reasons, the risk of C. difficile is heightened.

“We’re hoping to learn more about whether the C. difficile we see in our hospitals is transmitted from patient to patient or whether some patients are coming into hospital colonised with C. difficile,” says Dr. Kevin Afra, Fraser Health’s executive medical director for Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Control. 

“Our hope is that this project will inform future antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention strategies to enhance patient safety across the region.”