Weak and vulnerable elderly people are increasingly exposed to a fatal fungus in nursing homes plagued by poor care and low staffing, The New York Times reports.
The fungus, known as Candida auris, is drug resistant and being exacerbated by conditions in skilled nursing facilities, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Dr. Tom Chiller.
"They are the dark underbelly of drug-resistant infection," he told the Times.
Cleaning up America's nursing homes must be a priority, says Betsy McCaughey of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
"They are caldrons that are constantly seeding and reseeding hospitals with increasingly dangerous bacteria," she told the Times. "You'll never protect hospital patients until the nursing homes are forced to clean up."
The problem is compounded by staffing shortages.
"It is impossible for them to do a good job with the way their staffing is," Rush Medical College drug-resistant infection expert Dr. Mary Hayden told the Times: "The way they're set up, they can't do it."
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