Many Staph Superbug Infections Come from Healthcare Facilities

Staph Superbug is also known as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, most staph superbug infections are healthcare related. "There were 8,987 observed cases of invasive MRSA reported during the surveillance period. Most MRSA infections were healthcare-associated: 5,250 (58.4%) were community-onset infections, 2,389 (26.6%) were hospital-onset infections." This would indicate that 7,639 infections out of 8,987 were caused by getting medical care. This is not an acceptable number by anyone's standards. Health care settings like hospitals and nursing homes are the most common place to contract a staph superbug infection. You may go in for surgery only to find that you are much worse off than before. This deadly bug has an affinity for wounds and once it is in your bloodstream, it will cause organ failure and ultimately death. What is the medical community doing to protect us from the staph superbug? Not much.

According to the Associate for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology report in 2007, estimates that 1.2 million hospital patients are infected with MRSA (staph superbug) each year in the United States alone. An additional 423,000 in the hospital are colonized with MRSA. By colonized, this means it is a latent infection that may crop up at any point. I would think hospital staff and health care workers would be searching for innovative new ways to not infect their patients. If they are, it is not being publicized widely. My personal observation is that there seems to be a certain level of acceptance of the staph superbug in the medical community. If you get it, they will try to treat you. Yet, I do not see much in the way of preventative measures.

Unfortunately, it may take much public outcry and lawsuits before serious preventative action is taken. Many times hospitals can avoid infecting their patients with the staph superbug if they simply follow strict sanitary guidelines and bacterial testing procedures. With 1.7 million people getting infections from health care every year, hospitals are obviously not taking proper precautions. 100,000 United States citizens die every year from infections they obtain directly from going to the hospital each year. These are not people that die from any other cause, but as a direct result from getting an infection at the hospital.

If you are outraged by the needless deaths from the staph superbug, let's put pressure on the hospitals to do more to prevent its spread. Find out what hospitals infection rate is in your area. As consumers, this will allow us to avoid hospital with high rates. Certain states have already passed a bill requiring that hospitals report their infection rate (list of states). If your state isn't on this list, write to your state officials and request this information to be made public.