Mothers contacted woman whose baby needed a week’s treatment in another hospital for a bacterial infection after discharge from Matilda International Hospital, saying their babies had same bug
JEANETTE.WANG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Wednesday, 25 May, 2016, 11:32pm
The Matilda International Hospital on The Peak. Six mothers now say their newborns left the hospital with the same bacterial infection.
Five more women say their babies, delivered at a private hospital in Hong Kong, had the same potentially fatal bacterial infection as another baby discharged as healthy but later rushed to a different hospital for treatment. The cases occurred over an eight-day period.
The women contacted Ayesha de Kretser – whose baby, Lulu Violet, was treated for the infection after leaving Matilda International Hospital on The Peak – after she posted on Facebook about the case and was quoted yesterday in a South China Morning Postreport.
“The women have contacted me to say they’ve had similar Staphylococcus aureus infections diagnosed and treated after having babies at Matilda between May 3 and May 11,” de Kretser said. “Of these cases, three were treated by the same paediatrician that treated Lulu - Dr Carmen Tam - and they were all diagnosed before Lulu.”
An infectious diseases expert not involved with the cases said if two patients got a Staphylococcus infection in the same hospital unit, let alone six, over a short period of time this would be considered an outbreak.
“If any baby [is found] to have Staph infection, normally we would alert the other parents who had babies at the hospital around the time, even if some might have been discharged earlier. You have to alert them so that if any of the babies develop features of Staph infection they can bring their babies to see the doctor immediately,” said the expert, Dr Ho Pak-leung, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Dr Ho Pak-leung, associate professor in the department of microbiology at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
In correspondence, seen by the Post, between de Kretser and one of the other mothers over Facebook Messenger, the woman said she called the Matilda but the hospital said “they have no problem” and that her baby got the infection at home. The hospital did not even want to know the mother’s name.
The hospital is investigating Lulu’s case. Asked if other mothers had notified it of similar cases, the hospital’s executive director for business development, Lynne Fung , said: “We have been reaching out to our patients to keep them updated of the developments. We are currently in communication with two ladies and have asked them to give consent for us to obtain medical records from their doctors.” The Matilda did not respond to questions from the Post about Lulu’s case.
Posts in the Hong Kong Moms Facebook group on Wednesday.
Another mother, Annabella Ko Chung, wrote a post yesterday about her baby’s case in the Facebook group Hong Kong Moms where de Kretser first publicised Lulu’s case. Ko Chung wrote: “My daughter was born [at] the hospital and discharged on [May] 5 ... she had the same steph [sic] infection but was treated promptly by my pediatrician with topical antibiotics. She is now fully recovered.”
The Post was unable to reach any of the five women.
Pustules on baby Lulu’s skin six days after she was born. She was admitted to Hong Kong Adventist Hospital for a week’s treatment the same day. Photo: Martin Newell
The Department of Health is investigating the case involving Lulu, whose parents claim she was passed healthy and allowed home from the Matilda despite having a Staphylococcus infection.
Lulu was delivered by caesarean section at the Matilda on May 7 by private obstetrician Dr Lucy Lord of Central Health Medical Practice in Duddell Street, Central. By the time she was four days old, Lulu had three pustules 5 to 10 millimetres across around her umbilical stump, but Tam, the Central Health paediatrician, passed her as healthy and allowed her home. Lulu’s father, Martin Newell, claims his daughter was not swabbed to test for infection.
Two days later, the pustules were as big as 50-cent coins, the parents said. They took Lulu to Central Health, where paediatrician Dr Yvonne Ou diagnosed her as having impetigo, a bacterial skin infection. Ou prescribed oral antibiotics and told them to return two days later, but de Kretser sent pictures of Lulu’s sores to her paediatrician in Australia, who advised her to take the baby to hospital immediately. She was admitted to Hong Kong Adventist Hospital, diagnosed as having a Staphylococcus aureus infection in her bloodstream, and put on intravenous antibiotics for seven days before eventually recovering.
Ayesha de Kretser and Martin Newell with baby Lulu, now fully recovered. Photo: Martin Newell
Worried that other patients, including newborn babies, at the Matilda could have been exposed to the bacteria, de Kretser called the hospital to notify them of Lulu’s infection. But the hospital’s deputy general manager Rajwinder Kaur “flatly denied they had any bacterial infections in the hospital”, de Kretser said.
Obstetrician Lord did not respond to repeated questions about the case yesterday.
Ho said: “In public hospitals, we will look at Staph infection in newborns seriously, because we have seen very bad infection in the past.”
He said Staphylococcus infections were sporadic in Hong Kong. In the past 10 years there had been outbreaks in a private hospital in Kowloon and at least three public hospitals.
“Staph is commonly carried by healthy adults in the nose, so usually the source of a newborn’s infection would be the adult,” he added. “It ... could very well be the baby’s parents.”
A Staphylococcus infection could become aggressive in as little as 24 hours, he said. If it spread from the skin to the bloodstream and so to the brain, it could have severe long-term effects.
http://m.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-beauty/article/1954588/5-more-women-say-newborns-left-hong-kong-private-hospital
