The country's first dog trained to sniff out invisible bacteria has been put to work at Vancouver General Hospital.
An English springer spaniel has been trained to detect the presence of C. difficile, a superbug that can linger on hospital surfaces for long periods of time.
The two-year-old dog, named Angus, spent more than a year training for his job, and recently passed his training. The young but eager worker has joined the hospital’s infection fighting team at Vancouver General Hospital.
"We strive to continue to find ways to provide better care, and sometimes the answer is not more technology, but instead, man's best friend," Health Minister Terry Lake said in a statement.
The bacteria Angus is able to detect are especially dangerous to patients with compromised immune systems. C. difficile is not dangerous to the dog because he has a healthy immune system.
C. difficile is the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in hospitals and long-term care homes, according to microbiologist Elizabeth Bryce, infection control medial director for Vancouver Coastal Health.
"Clostridium difficile is a bacteria that is able to form spores, therefore it's resistant to a lot of our cleaning agents, and it can persist in the environment for a long period of time," Bryce said Tuesday.
"It can cause a range from nothing at all – some people can simply have it in their bodies – or it can cause a quite devastating disease that can sometimes progress to surgery."
The dog is able to sniff out the bacteria in areas of the hospital that would otherwise go unnoticed. Once located, the area can be cleaned with a disinfecting robot that emits a UV light and removes 99.9 per cent of the C. difficile spores.
Angus is owned and trained by Teresa Zurberg, who has had her own experience with the bug. She lost approximately 20 pounds, and spent a week in the hospital when she became infected during treatment for an unrelated injury.
Zurberg has a background in training bomb- and drug-detecting dogs, and found Angus in Montana. She brought the pup north of the border to work with her at VGH, but when he isn't working, Angus spends time at home with his owner's other spaniel.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Shannon Paterson
