Superbug can’t get best of spaniel
Trained dog sniffs out deadly bacterium during visit to Kelowna hospital
An English springer spaniel trained to detect a deadly bacterium was on the hunt Monday morning in Kelowna General Hospital.
Angus is trained to detect Clostridium difficile, a superbug that attacks people whose immune systems have been weakened by antibiotics.
He typically works at Vancouver General Hospital with his trainer, Teresa Zurberg, but the two of them came to Kelowna for a one-day visit.
Using his sharp sense of smell, Angus surveyed two units at KGH and found two reservoirs of C. difficile, said Zurberg.
“Our infection control team and our environmental services took care of it right away,” she said.
Once the bacterium is detected, the area is cleaned, often with a disinfecting robot that uses ultraviolet light.
Angus is trained to detect C. difficile and then is rewarded with either a treat or a toy.
“He doesn’t really care about C. diff,” said Zurberg. “To him, this is just a game.”
The work Angus does is essential, said Zurberg.
“It’s giving us a whole new way of looking at our hospital environments and how to use our environmental services better, how we can spread more infection control messages to the staff, to the patients and to the families,” she said. “What Angus is doing is creating a conversation around infection control and superbugs and what we can do within the environment itself to help keep these at a lower risk for everybody.”
Interior Health invited Angus and Zurberg to KGH as part of an ongoing effort to reduce cases of C. difficile, said Dr. Bing Wang, medical director of infection prevention control with IH.
“We always use the standard combination of measures to prevent C. diff, (including) strict hygiene before eating and before touching high-risk areas like door handles, (and) reducing the antibiotics we use,” said Wang.
In the past few months, there have been increased cases of C. difficile in the two units Angus visited at KGH, she said.
“We are doing enhanced cleaning and enhanced infection control measures there so we don’t see more cases.”
Although Angus’s visit to KGH was only a one-day event, Zurberg said she would love Angus to come to the Interior regularly to hunt for the superbug.
“I think he’s a great provincial asset . . . that hopefully we’ll be able to take throughout the province to help all the different health authorities with looking at environmental C. diff reservoir contamination.”