A mother believes her newborn was one of the fatalities from a 2008 fungus at New Orleans' Children’s Hospital, according to The Times-Picayune website.

Children’s Hospital recently said that five pediatric patients died over 11 months ending in July 2009 following an outbreak of a deadly infection caused by fungi present in dirt and decaying organic matter.

The hospital said that after it became aware of the outbreak in June 2009, it “aggressively” sought to address the problem by contacting public health officials, according to the article.

But it doesn’t appear the hospital, the state Department of Health and Hospitals or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did anything to notify the public or patients that the outbreak happened at Children’s, the article said.

Louisiana has no laws requiring hospitals to publicly report hospital acquired infections or hospital outbreaks.

Some hospitals do self-report select hospital safety data including some infections to the CDC’s National Health Care Safety Network as a requirement of getting Medicare reimbursement dollars, but Children’s is exempt from doing so because it is a pediatric facility.

Thirty-one other states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring hospitals to report hospital-acquired infection rates, the article said.

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