Infectious disease

The last report issued by the Comité sur l’immunisation du Québec (CIQ) concerning the Programme d’immunisation contre l’influenza du Québec (PIIQ) [Québec’s Influenza Immunization program] was published in 2007. An update became necessary, given the many scientific advances that have occurred in this field.

The primary objective of the PIIQ must be to reduce influenza…

Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) are bacteria frequently encountered in clinical settings, both as normal flora and as pathogens in a variety of infections.

The use of antibiotics has led to the emergence of various resistance mechanisms and some of these bacteria are now resistant to several classes of antibiotics.

This document was created to help healthcare-associated…

• Since August 2004, Clostridium difficile associated diarrhea (CDAD) has undergone ongoing surveillance in all Quebec hospitals with more than 1,000 admissions annually. The surveillance has monitored the evolution of CDAD levels in health care facilities and confirmed their decrease. From an average of 9.1 cases/10,000 patient days in 2005-2006, the average rate has dropped…

• Candida auris is an emerging microorganism that belongs to the yeast category. Increasingly, it is being found as a pathogen causing nosocomial fungal infections.
• First identified in Japan in 2009 in a sample from a patient’s auditory canal (Satoh et al., 2009; ECDC, 2016; Rock, 2017), it has since been identified in up to 17 countries, spread across at…

The frequency of adverse events (incidents and accidents) related to medical device reprocessing (MDR) is a concern for health care services. By definition, an incident means that a medical device breaches a recognized standard for MDR without having been used on a patient. An accident refers to any use on a patient of a medical device which does not meet a recognized standard for MDR, with…

A lot of new data on the immunogenicity, efficacy and effectiveness of fewer than three doses of HPV vaccine have become available since the publication of the CIQ report on the 2012 knowledge update. The two-dose schedule has become a standard that is widely accepted around the world. Such schedules are currently in use in more than half (48/82) of the countries offering HPV vaccination…

The childhood immunization program was implemented in Québec to reduce the burden of pneumococcal disease, with the primary objective of lowering the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). The program began in 2002, targeting children with a high risk of IPD, and in 2004 it became a universal program for all children under age five. A schedule of four doses (3+1) is…