C difficile Rates in the United Kingdom

Dr. Richard Vickers, chief scientific officer of R&D at Summit Therapeutics, discusses C. difficile rates in the United Kingdom.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“In the United Kingdom, we still have relatively low rates of Clostridium difficile—relatively, still unacceptable rates of C. diff one has to say, but it’s still very much top priority within hospitals and health care settings to make sure that we stay in control of it.

The packages that we had to put into place to minimize the rates of C. difficile, it’s not something that you can just take your foot off of the gas; we have to keep that pressure on at all times. The moment you do take your foot off, you start to see rates go back up again. And so, even though we’ve got it more under control, it’s still unacceptable that we have C. diff at the rates we do.

But I think the UK is somewhat of an isolated example, within Europe, we know particularly in eastern Europe, they have very high C. dif rates, big problems with hypervirulent strains. Territories like Italy are now starting to suffer as well, and so, it’s truly a global problem.”