“Superspreader” docs and nurses behind triggering hospital superbug outbreaks

A new study has revealed that doctors and nurses who don’t wash their hands are more likely to spread swine flu and hospital superbugs.

The study’s researchers suggest that dirty hands of doctors and nurses act as germ "superspreaders" and cause more infections.

The team led by Didier Guillemot from Pasteur Institute in Paris, France showed that staff who saw all patients briefly were more likely to spread germs than those who tended a few patients very closely.

If just one of the staff members always failed to wash his or her hands, it caused more infections than if the entire staff forgot one-quarter of the time.

Team member Laura Temime of the National Conservatory of Arts and Trades in Paris said that hospitals use the consumption of hand-hygiene products to monitor hand-washing,

“Our study suggests individual surveillance of hand hygiene would be better," New Scientist quoted Temime as saying.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.