Building owners, managers, and administrators of hospitals and other health care facilities around the country are being urged to shore up their water system management facilities to prevent further outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, which is the focus of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest Vital Signs report.
“Almost all Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks are preventable with improvements in water system management,” explained CDC Director Tom Frieden, adding that “At the end of the day, building owners and managers need to take steps to reduce the risk of Legionnaires’ disease [and] work together to reduce this risk and limit the number of people exposed, infected, and hospitalized or, potentially, fatally infected.”
Courtesy Janice Haney Carr/CDC
This image depicts a large grouping of Gram-negative Legionella pneumophila bacteria.
For the report, the CDC investigated 27 outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in the United States from 2000 through 2014, which involved a total of 415 cases and 65 fatalities. In each outbreak analysis, the location, source of exposure, and problems with environmental controls of Legionella – the bacterium that causes the disease – were evaluated.
Hotels and resorts accounted for 44% of all outbreaks over the 15-year period, followed by long-term care facilities (19%) and hospitals (15%). However, outbreaks at the latter two location types accounted for 85% of all deaths, while outbreaks at hotels and resorts accounted for only 6%. Potable water was the most common direct cause of Legionella infections, followed by water from cooling towers, hot tubs, industrial equipment, and decorative fountains.
Additionally, 23 of the investigations yielded enough information to determine the exact cause of the outbreak, all of which were caused by at least one of 4 issues. The first was process failures, such as not having a proper water system management program in place to handle Legionella; this was found in two-thirds of the outbreaks. The second major cause was human error, such as not replacing filters or tubing as recommended by manufacturers, which was a cause in half of the outbreaks. The third was equipment breakdown, which was found in one-third of the outbreaks. Finally, reasons external to the buildings themselves – such as water main breaks or disruptions caused by nearby construction – factored into one-third of the outbreaks.
“Large, recent outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in New York City and Flint, Michigan, have brought attention to the disease and highlight the need for us to understand why these outbreaks happen and how best to prevent them, [which is] why this Vital Signs is targeted to a specific audience that we in public health don’t talk [to] often enough: building owners and managers,” Dr. Frieden said. “It’s not a traditional public health audience, [but] they are the key to environmental controls in buildings that we live in, get our health care in, and work in everyday.”
To that end, Dr. Frieden announced the release of a new CDC toolkit entitled “Developing a Water Management Program to Reduce Legionella Growth & Spread in Buildings: A Practical Guide to Implementing Industry Standards,” which building owners, managers, and administrators can turn to for guidance on how to implement effective water system management protocols in their buildings.
Legionnaires’ disease is a serious lung infection caused by inhalation of the bacteria Legionella, which can be found in water and inhaled as airborne mist. Elderly individuals, as well as those with suppressed immune systems because of underlying illnesses, are at a heightened risk for Legionnaires’ disease, which would explain the higher death rates observed at hospitals and long-term care facilities. Dr. Frieden stated that outbreaks and cases of Legionnaires’ disease are on the rise nationally, with about 5,000 infections and 20 outbreaks occurring annually; roughly 10% of infections result in death.
The uptick in recent cases is likely because of “the aging of the population, the increase in chronic illness, [an] increase in immunosuppression through use of medication to treat a variety of conditions [and] an aging plumbing infrastructure and that makes maintenance all the more challenging,” according to Dr. Frieden. “It is also possible that increased use of diagnostic tests and more reliable reporting are contributing to some of the rising rates.”