Efforts are being made by hospitals and nursing homes to carry out work independently in order to prevent outbreaks of fatal superbugs. However, they hardly communicate with each other when patients are transferred who might be infected with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

If they make efforts together, they could considerably control the number of people who fall ill. According to a team of UC Irvine researchers working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they could keep almost 20,000 people in Orange County from getting sick over a period of 15 years from a bacterium commonly called CRE.

According to the CDC report that was released on Tuesday, better coordination between hospitals and other health care could help prevent over 600,000 infections and save thousands of lives over five years countrywide.

As per scientists, the CRE bacteria together with other superbugs can’t be destroyed with standard antibiotics. They can lead to sepsis, pneumonia, meningitis and other severe infections. And some of them are deadly and could lead to at least 2 million illnesses and kill at least 23,000 people annually in the US.

According to the CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, “No one facility can stop this, because outbreaks move across facilities. Facilities that go at it alone can’t protect their patients”.

The study models by the CDC were partially based on work carried out by UC Irvine researcher Dr. Susan Huang. She and her team gathered data on admissions, time of stay, diagnosis and transfer locations from a number of health care facilities, together with some hospitals, in Orange County.