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The federal government is hobbling efforts to control antibiotic-resistant microbes by sitting on reports about bacteria that sicken and kill thousands of Canadians each year, several doctors say.

Infectious disease experts say Ottawa is treating national microbial surveillance reports like “sensitive government documents.” And the doctors are so frustrated, they are releasing the data they can obtain on their own website.

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“Otherwise, it’s years before we see it on the federal website,” says Dr. Mark Joffe, president of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada (AMMI), which represents physicians, clinical microbiologists and researchers.

The association has obtained and posted a September 2013 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada on superbugs that infect thousands of patients in Canadian hospitals each year, along with a collection of other federal reports on microbes such as carbapenem-resistant organisms, an alarming new breed of bugs that have evolved ways to evade even antibiotics of last resort.