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Nurses Asked to Wash Hands to Help Control Deadly MRSA Bacteria
A surprisingly deadly drug-resistant bacteria has claimed more lives than AIDS in 2005. That's the bad news.
The good news is, its spread can be slowed down by strict adherence to hygiene rules in hospitals and health care facilities, according to a new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The killer bacteria's scientific name is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
The authors of the study, who work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), recommended strict adherence to basic personal hygiene practices by nurses, doctors and other health care workers like washing hands frequently throughout the day.
Other suggestion that has already been put to practice with considerable success is to screen the incoming patients and treat those with MRSA in quarantine. Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Chicago reported 60 percent reduction in invasive MRSA infections after it began screening all patients in 2005.
The study examined nine metropolitan areas and then extrapolated their data nationwide.
The number of MRSA deaths the researchers came up with (18,650 out of 94,360 MRSA patients) is greater than the total number of patients who die in the USA each year due to H.I.V.-AIDS, Parkinson's disease, emphysema and homicide combined.
MRSA affects "46 out of every 1,000 U.S. hospital and nursing home patients — or as many as 5 percent," the study has found.
Dr. Elizabeth A. Bancroft, an epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said the finding was "astounding."
Dr. John A. Jernigan, the deputy chief of prevention and response at CDCP, said "this confirms in a very rigorous way that this is a huge health problem."
In Virginia 21 schools were closed recently after a teenager died due to MRSA infection.
MRSA is not especially deadly when it stays on the skin surface. But the invasive MRSA that enters the bloodstream through cuts and open wounds exacts its toll quickly. The study concluded that "85 percent of invasive MRSA infections are associated with health care treatment."
The antibiotic-resistant bacteria "can be transmitted by contact as casual as the brush of a doctor's lab coat." MRSA can be fought only with medication delivered intravenously which creates its own complications in patients whose immune systems have already been weakened.
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