Quebec is suffering from a hospital acquired Super Bug called C. difficile. It has already killed more than 200 people, and they can't seem to get it under control. It is like the plague, where people have to be quarantined, health workers are becoming ill, and family cannot visit patients for fear of infection.

Hospitals are being told to "clean up" their buildings, corridors, operating theatres, etc. Staff are being given the reminder to "wash their hands" (if they need to be reminded, they have no business working in a hospital in the first place).

But Pierre Fontaine, a union official at a Montreal hospital, says efforts to stop the spread of the potentially fatal bacteria aren't working.

"In reality, what we do, is to bring bacteria from one room to another. And we do our best for the appearance, it seems to be clean, but in fact, we are not able to struggle against the bacteria," he says.

In the United States, this type of thing doesn't happen as often or as seriously as it does here. Because hospitals are privately funded, they can afford the staff and resources it takes to keep hospitals clean. In a country like the US, where you get what you pay for, a hospital must keep clean or it will face a lawsuit if something like this happened. Just imagine how you would feel if your parent or child went into the hospital for something routine like appendicitis or varicose vein removal, and died because the hallways were crawling with bacteria.

Today my friend and I were talking about the hell her mother went through a few years ago in Montreal. She became tired, lost weight rapidly, and could hardly take 10 steps without collapsing. My own parents both died of cancer, and that is what I feared she had. She was taken to the Lakeshore General Hospital - notorious for its filthy conditions and poorly educated staff - and was given a preliminary diagnosis of breast cancer coupled with a tumor low down on her spine, also thought to be malignant. They scheduled emergency surgery for the following afternoon. The next morning, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, and stationed at the Montreal General, happened to be visiting a patient in the same room. He looked at Patricia's chart, and gave her a quick exam. He then proceeded to have her urgently removed from the Lakeshore and down to the Montreal General - she did not have cancer, but was suffering from a near fatal liver infection that would have killed her if something had not been done that very day. The Lakeshore would have happily cut her tits off and left her to die. However, they were too late. Although she lived, she is now blind. The infection did so much damage to her liver, and her corneas, that she will never regain her sight, even after laser surgery.

Although they took excellent medical care of her at the Montreal General, she stayed there for more than two weeks without having her hair washed. After two weeks, my friend swiped a bedpan and some shampoo, and used these rudimentary - and thoroughly unhygenic - tools to wash her mother's hair. It was not washed again for the two remaining weeks of her stay.

It doesn't matter how many times nurses wash their hands - if patients are left to stew in their own filth, and spilled urine isn't cleaned from the elevator floor, clean hands and tidy nails will not stave off infection.

Dr. Vivian Loo, author of a study conducted from January to June, said yesterday her findings indicate the virulent strain was also indirectly responsible for 108 deaths in the 10 hospitals in Montreal and Sherbrooke, Que.

Loo found that 7,000 people were infected in eight Quebec hospitals from April 2003 to April 2004. More worrying is that the fatality rate of those infected was six times higher than expected because the superbug has been mutating into a deadlier form.

The Americans can come rushing up here for cheap drugs and flu shots, but if I have so much as a nosebleed, you will find my checkbook and I across the border in Buffalo.