IRELAND is in a 'race against time' to fight the worst superbug the country has ever seen, a health expert has warned.
Professor Martin Cormacin said there'll be empty chairs around tables this Christmas because of the antibiotic resistant CPE.
Carbapenemase Producing Enterobacteriaceaem (CPE) is family of common commensal infectious agents, including salmonella and E. coli and is shed in the faeces and transmitted by direct and indirect contact.
CPE first appeared in Ireland in 2009, and the HSE has set up a special lab and task force for the superbug in the subsequent years.
In October 2017 the Minister for Health Simon Harris declared a public health emergency over the superbug.
So far this year, 400 people have been diagnosed with CPE, including 19 people in the last week.
More than half of patients who develop a bloodstream infection as a result of the superbug will die.
Speaking to RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Professor Cormacin - who is the HSE's national clinical lead for healthcare acquired infections - said CPE is more about people than bugs.
Prof Cormacin said: "CPE is the latest wave in a series of waves of antibiotic resistant bugs that have hit the world in the last 40 years.
"CPE is the worst one that we've ever come across because the antibiotic choices that we have left to treat it are very limited. It's the worst superbug that we've seen to date.
"This is a race against time, once CPE becomes widespread, you can't go back. We've seen this happen before with other waves of antibiotic resistant bugs like MRSA."
Professor Cormacin has said most people who get CPE don't realise they have it as it can live in the gut without causing problems.
However, the condition can get very serious if the infection spreads to the bloodstream.
He said: "The problem is when people become very vulnerable to infection it may get out of the gut into the bloodstream and then we have very few antibiotics left to treat it.
"The people who are most at risk from this are people who are already vulnerable and maybe on complicated treatments, needing a lot of healthcare, and for some of them who get CPE and it crosses into the bloodstream then it becomes very serious."
Professor Cormacin said the great majority of infections are spread in hospitals in Ireland and across Europe and we must change how how we work hospitals to prevent the spread of bugs.
"We need to move faster and the extent of the transformation and how we do our business that we need to do - not just in the HSE but in the entire healthcare sector private and public - is much deeper than what people have fully grasped yet.
"My estimate is that we're going to need to spend hundreds of millions in the next two to five years and every month that we try to get our head around that lessens our opportunity will increase the ultimate costs and put us at risk of seeing more empty chairs around Christmas tables in the next 10 to 20 years."
