This ONE thing you don’t expect to encounter when you go to the hospital can be the MOST dangerous

Overnight stays in the hospital these days, on average, are far fewer than they were even 10 years ago, thanks in large part to upgrades in outpatient care, the rise of alternative medical treatments and other improvements.

Still, hospital admissions are certainly not a thing of the past. That said, the one thing you do not expect if you have to be hospital-bound is to get even sicker while you’re there — yet that is what is happening to a growing number of patients.

Harmful infections are not something you’re supposed to contract in a hospital, in theory anyway, as long as the hospital staff is doing everything they can to ensure proper sanitary protocols are being followed. And while you have every right to expect that they are, in many cases that’s not what is happening, Lifezette reported.

The site noted:

Some hospitals actually spend a lot of time, energy and money on getting rid of hospital-acquired infections. For instance, doctors and staff in England have been battling a hardy Japanese fungus called Candida auris in their hospitals since 2013. According to BBC News, this fungus has been showing resistance against commonly prescribed medicines, a problem undoubtedly caused by the overuse of antibiotics.

But also, health officials in England are both aware of the infection problem and why it continues to spread. Approximately 20 different hospitals throughout the country have had to deal with candid auris outbreaks this year alone, and more than 30 others have experienced the infection.

It gets worse, however. Some of the outbreaks have happened in facilities where staff has had a tough time getting the fungal infection under control. At those hospitals, the staff has been unable to control the infection’s spread — though Public Health England has since announced that the outbreaks have officially been declared over.

“One of the reasons why Candida auris can spread so easily is that this type of fungus actually lives on the skin as well as in the body,” Lifezette reported. “Hospitals in the U.K. have reported the infection’s spread within a few hours of initial contact,” so it also spreads very quickly.

As such, researchers have come to believe that it is very likely the fungus is being spread via physical contact — which also means that hospital staff is probably not adequately protecting and disinfecting themselves and their equipment after coming into contact with it.

Another reason the infection spreads so easily is because patients do not always present with symptoms; in England, doctors most often diagnose patients via screenings, not symptoms.

The problem occurs in the United States as well, of course. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that one out of every 25 patients contracts a hospital-borne infection — but, given the CDC’s track record of incompetence, it’s possible that figure is actually higher. (Related: Are hospitals serving up flesh-eating bacteria?)

In Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post, hospital-borne infections cost the country $9.8 billion every year. Some 4,000 – 6,000 Israelis die each year of complications, while 40,000 more, or 7-10 percent, of all hospital patients are negatively affected.

“In fact, the Health Ministry is dealing with this field more than before, but without investing funds specifically for this purpose and hiring more personnel in the field of infection prevention, there will be no change in direction here,” said Dr. Eyal Zimlichman of the Sheba Media Center in Tel Hashomer.

This has been a problem for years. In 2010 Natural News reported that hospital superbugs killed 48,000 people a year, on average, according to a study by the Archives of Internal Medicine. The primary causes of death: Sepsis and pneumonia.

Getting a hospital-borne infection can lead to longer hospital stays, higher medical costs and, in worst-case scenarios even death.

“In many cases, these conditions could have been avoided with better infection control in hospitals,” Ramanan Laxminarayan, Ph.D., principal investigator for the study said in a statement.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

Lifezette.com

JPost.com