AU: Onions imported from US suspected of bringing deadly strain of superbug to Australia
Jane Hansen / The Daily Telgraph writes: The highly virulent strain of Clostridium difficile (C-diff), a spore-forming bacterium which causes severe diarrhoea and is resistant to many antibiotics, swept through Europe and the US before arriving in Australia in 2009.
Thomas Riley, a professor of microbiology at the University of Western Australia, said Australian hospitals experienced a dramatic increase in the C-diff strain known as 244 towards the end of 2011.
The bug, which is now the number one cause of hospital-related diarrhoea, poses the biggest risk in hospital settings where high antibiotic use allows it to flourish in compromised patients.
Currently 150 plus patients a month are infected in NSW hospitals.