Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) is facing potentially a large cleaning bill to fight a lethal superbug that has already taken hold in hospitals in Dublin and Limerick, according to an article on the Newstalk 106-108 website.
The Irish Times reports that more than 2,000 patients at Tallaght Hospital have come into contact with carbapenemase-producing enterobacteriaceae (CPE) since it was first identified at the facility in mid-2015.
In an effort to tackle the bug, the hospital has been forced to dramatically increase its cleaning budget, restrict visiting, cancel operations and test hundreds of patients each week.
Some are blaming the outbreak in part on cuts to the facility's cleaning budget — which saw staff left with seven minutes to clean a bed before new patients were brought in, and routine cleaning timetables cancelled on Sundays.
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