Doctors urge caution over hospital animal visits

Link: The Canadian Press: Hedgehogs bad, Labradors good: group issues new advice for hospital pet visits.

Hedgehogs, prairie dogs, non-human primates and alpacas shouldn't be making rounds in hospitals and long-term care facilities, according to new infection control advice for popular animal visitation programs. Therapy animals shouldn't be permitted access to patients' bathrooms, where they could pick up bugs like Clostridium difficile by licking surfaces or drinking from toilet bowls. And animals at high risk of carrying salmonella - turtles and dogs fed a raw food diet - should be barred from participating in animal therapy programs, the guidelines say. The lengthy list of recommendations, recently published in the American Journal of Infection Control, was the product of a consensus conference held in Toronto in January 2007. The conference, which drew in animal and human health experts, therapy animal program operators and infection control specialists, was sponsored by the Public Health Agency of Canada and the University of Guelph's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses. (Zoonoses are the diseases that move back and forth between two-and four-legged animals.) The idea behind the guidelines is to minimize the risk that visiting animals will spread more than love as they make their way from patient to patient.