Felix Bett

 INFECTIOUS DISEASE Name: Course Instructor’s name Institution Date To the Editor, RE: THE SPREAD OF THE “SUPERBUG” AND MEASURES TAKEN TO CONTAIN IT The Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is commonly known as the golden staph, or “superbug”. According to News Medical, Staphylococcus Aureus is the most common virus that causes of staph infections. It is a spherical bacterium that is often found in the nose as well as the skin. It causes a wide range of illnesses, ranging from minor skin infections like pimples, boils and scalded skin syndrome, to life-threatening diseases like pneumonia, toxic shock syndrome (TSS) as well as meningitis. The infection is mainly spread via human-to-human contact, but recently some veterinarians have found out that the superbug can also be spread via pets, with environmental pollution of the infection believed to play a relatively insignificant part. This is a matter of current importance for several reasons. One, very few people are conversant will the disease. This is because the average person is ignorant about most medical matters except only the most important and well-known. As a result, most people do not take measures to protect themselves from this potentially fatal disease. Two, nurses and other medical staff do not properly notify the patients and, more importantly, their families about the disease. Even though it is something that spreads mostly in hospitals, there is a chance that if a patient contracts the disease, he or she might possibly spread it to a member of staff, another patient, or even a hospital visitor like a family member before he or she is even diagnosed. If the family members are infected, there is a high chance that they will spread it to others, and as a result increase the spread of the disease, and might potentially even cause an outbreak. According to Stöppler, MRSA outbreaks are occurring more and more in the community, away from hospitals. The infections may occur in the people that have not been hospitalized in the past year, people who do not have any signs of immune deficiency, or even people who have not had a medical procedure performed on them in the past year. These infections are termed as Community Associated MRSA infections, or CA-MRSA in short. A series of outbreaks of CA-MRSA have already been reported in Australia (Nimmo and Coombs, 2008). There are several things being done in order to curb the spread of the infection. One, there are several scientific meetings that have been held over the years in order to address the issue. For instance, in 2008 there was an open meeting held by the ASM TriState in order to address the issue of the spread of MRSA, among other things (Bowman 118). Two, the Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR) has been performing surveys and surveillance programs in order to check the rate of infection of MRSA and CA-MRSA in hospitals and the community in general. Three, doctors use the antibiotic vancomycin to treat resistant Staph infections (Zeller). Current research is directed toward improvements in surveillance, surgical treatments, and development of new antibiotics. One of your writers, Jim O'Rourke, did a very good job in bringing to light the issue of this highly infectious and potentially dangerous disease. In his article, he talked about the risk of the infection spreading as there were not enough hospital cleaners. However, he showed that even medical staff are ignorant about the disease as an infected hospital patient was left alone in a corridor at the hospital simply because there weren’t any clean rooms available (O'Rourke). While in the corridor, the patient could have spread the infection to anything from the walls to the floor. Hundreds of patients, staff and visitors pass through the same corridor every day. Therefore this action was increasing the risk of infection instead of reducing it, not to mention unethical to the patient as he was forced to sleep in the corridor. It is of the utmost importance that the public health audience spread information about MRSA, so that more people become aware of it, and to prevent ignorance on ways to prevent the spread of infection—as this ignorance was shown among the staff members of the hospital in Mr. O'Rourke’s article. The more people know about it, the better they can work to curb the spread of the infection. Yours faithfully, (Insert Name). Reference List Staphylococcus Aureus Prevention. News Medical. Retrieved from http://www.news-medical.net/health/Staphylococcus-Aureus-Prevention.aspx O'Rourke, J. (May 6, 2012). Superbugs battle a numbers game. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/superbugs-battle-a-numbers-game-20120505-1y5p1.html What is Staphylococcus Aureus? News Medical. Retrieved from http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Staphylococcus-Aureus.aspx Stöppler, Melissa C. Superbug Staph Spread in Community. Retrieved from Medicine Net at http://www.medicinenet.com/staph_infection/article.htm#symptoms Nimmo, G.R. and Coombs, G.W. (2008) Community-associated methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Australia. Int. J. Antimicrob. Agents 31, 401-410. Bowman, Rod (2008). TriState 2008. Australia Microbiology, 118 Zeller, John L. (2007) MRSA Infections. Retrieved from JAMA at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=298&issue=15&page=1826