Expectant mothers may have to travel out of the city to deliver their babies, after a severe bacterial infection led a Toronto neonatal intensive care ward to close.
Hospital officials at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre neonatal ward, located in the Women's College Hospital downtown, said its doors will remain closed for at least another two weeks.
Some women may be transferred to other nearby hospitals, even as far away as Buffalo, N.Y.
It is the city's largest ward and its closing puts added stress on Toronto's other neonatal units -- many of them already stretched to the limit.
"There is no room in our system for a unit to close, even for a little bit," Dr. Martin Skidmore, chief of pediatrics at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, told CTV News on Friday.
"It puts a strain on a system that is literally at the breaking point," said Skidmore.
Dr. Shoo Lee, head of the Canadian Neonatal Network, said there are more premature babies being born than ever before.
Smaller babies are surviving, but staying longer within neonatal care. Fewer specialists and neonatal nurses to deal with the increase means hospitals across the country are working at capacity.
"We've been completely full" Lee told CTV News. "We can not accept infants from anywhere else and very often, this is the case across the country. This needs to be addressed quite urgently."
The outbreak of methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus has led the unit to stop accepting premature babies born at other hospitals and from taking on high-risk pregnancy transfers from other neonatal units this week.
"The issue now is trying to contain it and prevent it from spreading to more babies," Dr. Mary Vearncombe, director of infection control at Women's College and at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, told CTV Newsnet on Friday.
Twenty-eight of the unit's babies remain in hospital and 12 of them are in isolation. No infants have died but two have developed breathing problems.
Several of the babies have developed abscesses, eye and blood infections and pneumonia.
Vearncombe described methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus as something many people carry on their skin without causing any problems.
"You and I would localize this infection," said Dr. Skidmore."We would clear it up without needing antibiotics. Little babies are neurologically incompetent and need some extra help."
The infection likely spread due to contact with unwashed hands.
Vearncombe said those patients who are ill with the infection will be kept in the hospital until they're treated and are better. Those babies where the organism is just sitting on their skin, not causing any problems, can be discharged.
The infection first appeared at the ward in January, but could not be contained despite special measures put into place to limit the spread.
Health workers tried separating infected and healthy babies and having NICU staff wear gloves and gowns at all times to limit the spread, but nothing worked.
The ward has 41 beds, each of which is squeezed into about 30 square feet of space -- far short of the recommended 100 square feet.
Because the neonatal system is stretched so thin in Toronto, any reduction in capacity has a severe impact.
A. G. Klei, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health, said the ministry was aware the unit had been closed, and said all babies in the ward would be tested.
He said the province is working hard to make the system more effective and innovative and expand neonatal intensive care capacity.
With a report from CTV's Avis Favaro
