Children’s Hospitals Are Partly to Blame as Superbugs Increasingly Attack Kids

COLUMBIA, Mo. — A memory haunts Christina Fuhrman: the image of her toddler Pearl lying pale and listless in a hospital bed, tethered to an IV to keep her hydrated as she struggled against a superbug infection. “She survived by the grace of God,” Fuhrman said of the illness that struck her oldest child in this central Missouri city almost five years ago. “She could’ve gone septic fast. Her condition was near critical.” Pearl was fighting Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, a type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as a superbug. A growing body of research shows that overuse and misuse of antibiotics in children’s hospitals — which health experts ...

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