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A room in Crumlin Hospital Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

Crumlin Hospital says it mistakenly told 18 families their children may have been infected

However the children’s hospital now says there’s a new group of seven children who may have been contaminated with a bug.

CRUMLIN CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL has said it mistakenly told 18 families that their children may have been contaminated by a bug found on hospital equipment.

However the Dublin hospital has now said that seven other children have been told that they may have been infected by bacteria on the contaminated scope.

The head of the HSE has blasted the hospital and said described the situation as a ‘catastrophic failure’.

The hospital blamed a mix-up with two colonoscopy machines for the mistake. It said that the two machines had failed a quality assurance check and one was found to be contaminated with ESBL – but the wrong group of children were informed that they had been contaminated.

Speaking before the Oireachtas Health Committee this morning, HSE Director General Tony O’Brien said that there were major concerns about the incident.

“No amount of spin from PR companies on behalf of the hospital can mask the seriousness of this,” he said.

Our Lady’s Children Hospital went public with the possible contamination on Tuesday night when it said that a routine sterilisation of equipment used to perform colonoscopies had discovered a microbiological growth which has been identified as ESBL. ESBL are bacteria that live in the bowel and which cannot be treated by commonly used antibiotics, according to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.

ESBL are not harmful for most people but can sometimes cause infection in vulnerable patients. Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital said there was no immediate impact on the children’s health.

The hospital said all seven families have now been contacted and it is sending them information packs and sample stool testing kits. The families can take the samples themselves or have it done at the hospital.

The hospital said it has offered full tests to the original 18 children to reassure them that they are not at risk of being infected.

If any of the children are found to be infected with the ESBL bug, the hospital said it will provide them and their family with all the necessary information and support.

The hospital apologised to all concerned for any distress caused and said no other patients or hospital services were affected by the incident. A formal investigation is to begin to examine the cause of the contamination.

Read: Crumlin Children’s Hospital contacts families after contamination scare >

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    Mute Loop De Loop
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    Jul 25th 2013, 1:13 PM

    What a shower of clowns the HSE are. Firstly contaminate their equipment and then inform the wrong patients.
    Best wishes to all the kids affected by this.

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    Mute Jed I. Knight
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    Jul 25th 2013, 2:51 PM

    This is becoming beyond serious. I read elsewhere (apologies Journal) that Minister Reilly now considers the situation regarding Junior Doctors “immoral” in that the practices here are so perverse our doctors are forced abroad while we recruit doctors from the Third World, depriving them of their doctors. So he’s finally copped on has he? And his solution to this, he’s commissioned a report.
    It’s this sh*te that’s the root cause of the problems within the HSE, yes the CJD scare in the Beaumont should never happen to anyone, but that was an unpredictable problem. While we don’t everything surrounding the bacterial issue with scopes in Crumlin Hospital there’s sufficient information to believe it simply should never have been allowed to happen, it isn’t a question of someone screwing up it’s a question of not having the necessary systems in place.
    We’ve allowed our Health Service to be savaged in cutbacks, but the very people who should have been targeted in these cuts have remained safe, instead its the front line patient services that have been cut, it’s the end user that has suffered. Politicians have lauded the fact that there’s a recruitment ban in the HSE, and thousands of staff have left in recent years, all true. What they don’t say is how many have had to be hired through Agencies – and at an even higher expense to the taxpayer, or exactly who is making enormous profits from all this.
    Sooner or later one of these scares won’t be a scare, it’ll be the real thing. An exhausted doctor will make a mistake, a radiographer examining two or three times the scans she’s supposed to will misdiagnose someone, a technician will make a mistake with bloods. This medical Russian roulette can’t be allowed to continue, it we keep cutting back from the wrong people in the HSE it’s only a matter of time before our worst nightmare becomes a reality.

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    Mute Liam Townsend
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    Jul 25th 2013, 1:54 PM

    It’s ESBL, not EBSL…

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    Mute vv7k7Z3c
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    Jul 25th 2013, 3:01 PM

    Apologies, not sure how that mistake slipped through. It’s been fixed now.

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    Mute Johnny Ace
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    Jul 25th 2013, 9:47 PM

    Everyone makes mistakes? Maybe?

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    Mute nicola.d
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    Jul 25th 2013, 1:58 PM

    The incompetence in crumlin hospital is scary!

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    Mute Ste Maloney
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    Jul 25th 2013, 2:45 PM

    I’d say the fact staff are stretched to the max looking after sick kids and services are being stripped daily is the problem. The staff of Crumlin are fantastic. Unfortunately healthcare in Ireland is broken.

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    Mute James
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    Jul 25th 2013, 5:49 PM

    Are these things not double checked before they contact the parents

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