TORONTO - The province is putting more lives at risk by not moving more quickly to require Ontario hospitals to report potentially dangerous infections like C. difficile in the wake of dozens of deaths at a facility in Burlington, Ont., labour critics said Friday.

Health Minister George Smitherman should force hospitals to start reporting such cases immediately, rather than by the end of the year as promised, said Michael Hurley, president and CEO of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.

An estimated 1,200 people will die from such infections before the end of the year -- lives that could be saved if more dramatic action is taken, he said.

"I bet if we swabbed right now any hospital in Ontario, we'd scare you with the results," said Hurley, whose organization represents 25,000 hospital support staff, including cleaners, paramedics and nurses.

"Because of the financial pressure, cleaners and cleaning supervisors are told to prioritize and rotate cleaning schedules. There's not enough attention being paid to the basic cleaning of the facilities, and as a result, there are huge problems."

Most common in nursing homes

The group is calling on the province to hire more hospital cleaners and review infection control practices to prevent the kind of outbreak that killed 30 patients at Burlington's Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital and other Ontario facilities.

C. difficile is one of the most common infections in hospitals and nursing homes. The bacterium, which is found in feces, causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis.

Seniors and patients requiring prolonged use of antibiotics are at greater risk of infection, which can occur through physical contact after touching a contaminated surface.

Last year, the Ontario coroner's office determined that C. difficile caused or contributed to 18 deaths at a Sault Ste. Marie hospital and suggested hospital overcrowding and out-of-date facilities may have contributed to the outbreak.

More than a dozen cases

A Toronto-area hospital also battled more than a dozen cases last year that were positively identified as the same virulent strain that has claimed some 2,000 lives in Quebec since 2003.

Most recently, Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital reported Wednesday that C. difficile caused 62 patient deaths and 115 other infections between May 2006 and December 2007.

In the wake of the report, Smitherman promised to extend mandatory reporting to C. difficile and a few other hospital-acquired infections by the end of the year. But he dismissed the idea of a broader investigation into how so many patients died in Burlington.

Manitoba and Quebec now require hospitals to report cases of C. difficile.

But mandatory reporting isn't enough, said Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

Higher standards needed

The Liberals should set higher standards to keep hospitals cleaner and to prevent infection, he added.

"I just think it's incumbent upon the government to indicate some sort of game plan in response to that report beyond just having people report on it," Tory said.

"They've got to take measures to reduce the number of incidences where it's reported because they've kept hospitals cleaner, put people less at risk, including people who work in hospitals, who visit and who are in there receiving care."

A spokeswoman for Smitherman noted the province funds 136 infection control practitioners in hospitals across Ontario who provide advice and direction to keep the facilities clean. It also has 14 regional infection control networks that were developed in the wake of the SARS crisis five years ago.

Costly measures

Joseph Brant spent about $1 million to deal with its C. difficile outbreak and hired 23 additional full-time cleaning staff, which helped push the hospital into a $2-million deficit last year, said hospital president and CEO Don Scott.

By law, Ontario hospitals are forbidden from carrying deficits.

The hospital now spends about $1.4 million a year -- or one per cent of its operating budget -- on housekeeping costs, Scott said. It's still in discussions with local health officials over its operating plan.

"We're probably now one of the safest hospitals in the country (for C. difficile) at this point, and we're going to maintain that," he said. "We're not going to let that slip."