The program's focus is drug-resistant bacteria, the increasingly familiar methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) and C. difficile. It is based, though, on a sampling of just 57 teaching hospitals, a fraction of the country's 250 or so acute-care hospitals. The SARS outbreak, for instance, erupted at a community hospital that is not part of that network.
Infectious-disease doctors have long complained that it takes too long for the data those hospitals submit to the Agency to be posted.
"If I want to know what's happening with MRSA, I call my friends," said Dr. McGeer.
More complete, and easier to access, is the system developed by the European Centre for Disease Control, says Lynora Saxinger, an infectiousdisease specialist at the University of Alberta. It not only tracks drug-resistant bugs, but matches those stats with the use - or possible over-use - of antibiotics, considered the main cause of the problem.
The latest concern of infectiousdisease specialists is a class of antibiotic-defeating organisms known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriacaeae (CRE), a "game-changer," said Dr. Saxinger. The death rate is as high as 50%.
CRE is part of the public health agency's surveillance system, meaning those 57 hospitals submit their numbers, but Dr. McGeer said all acutecare hospitals in Canada should have to report them.
Meanwhile, "the last CRE outbreak ... I heard about it on the news," said Dr. Saxinger.