Some Steps to help Prevent the Spread of Community Acquired MRSA

1.  Shower often and keep your hands clean.  Staph and MRSA can live up to 60 days on various surfaces.  Avoid sharing razors, towels, clothes, or bars of soap.  It is still amazing how often it comes back to washing your hands isn’t it?

2. It is imperative to clean and sanitize the locker rooms and workout equipment.   You can use bleach or some other sanitizing product, but be sure you read the instructions about the proper dwell time.  With some products the dwell time may be up to 15 minutes.  That means you have to keep the surface wet with the sanitizing agent for up to that amount of time for it to do its job properly.  Too often we see cleaning crews or other individuals spray a surface with a good product, but then almost immediately wipe it off.  If it hasn’t dwelled properly, it will NOT work.

3. Go beyond cleaning and sanitizing; investigate the next step.  Check into the latest wave of products that are designed to stop the bacteria from spreading, but without the use of poisons.

This is critical, because if you have been reading some of the earlier posts you’ll note a couple of common themes.  People don’t wash their hands enough, and society in general is overusing antibiotics.

The overuse of antibiotics is rendering most antibiotics essentially useless.  They are only about half as effective today as they were 10 years ago because the bacteria, or various microbes, adapt to them.  Antibiotics are a form of poison to those microbes, but the microbes that survive the treatment will adapt and the treatment is less and less effective.

The next step is a product that kills the microbes through a mechanical method.

Go here: Indusco Ltd.

and here for more information: Midwest BioShield

This product appears to be the next wave of killing those dangerous microbes which have mutated so dramatically from the overuse of antibiotics.

200,000 per Year?!

A new report called “Dead by Mistake” was released on August 10th stating that medical mistakes can occur from illegible handwriting, sleep deprivation of the doctor, poor documentation and communication, improper nurse-to-patient ratios, wrong-side surgeries, misdiagnosis, and hospital infections, among other causes.

Of the 200,000 almost 99,000 (according to the CDC) die from hospital acquired infections.

Did you get that?

“Hospital acquired infections” –  Doesn’t that sound preventable to you?

We must start looking for better ways to treat touch points and other common areas in hospitals where these preventable infections lurk.  Something is only sanitized until someone touches it.  So a protective shield must be applied to touchpoints, wheel chairs, tables, countertops, etc., to stop the spread of diseases that come into contact with those items.

Regular cleaning and sanitizing are not doing it – we have to be open to finding new solutions using innovative technologies.

Read more: Medical Mistakes Blamed for 200K Deaths A Year

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Appropriate Sanitation and Cleaning Works Against Swine Flu & MRSA

Now, here is an interesting article about how many of the regimes adopted for MRSA can also apply to Swine Flu treatment.  A small excerpt:

Here are the top ten ways you can protect yourself:
1. Wash your hands! Wash or sanitize before eating, after restroom use and often in between.
2. Keep your hands off of your face (especially eyes, nose and mouth).
3. Cover your cough (ideally cough into your sleeve at the crook of your elbow).
4. Dispose of tissues properly and then wash your hands.

Hey, there’s that wash your hands thing again.  Not once, but twice in the first 4 bullet points.  Does it seem that washing one’s hands is important?  Hmmm.

Trenton, MO Newspaper Article

MRSA is a Super Germ

This is from Dr. Donohue, a syndicated columnist discussing health care, prevention, and treatment.

Dear Dr. Donohue — My husband recently passed away. He was diagnosed as having MRSA. I have never heard of this disease, and cannot find it in my medical dictionary. Would you please explain what it is? How is it contracted?

MRSA, pronounced “mersa,” stands for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus (STAFF-uh-low-KOK-us) aureus. Let’s shorten “staphylococcus” to “staph” (staff). It’s a bacterium, a germ. You can’t escape coming into contact with it. It’s everywhere. Many people harbor it in the lower part of their noses and don’t get sick from it. They can, however, transfer it to their fingers and hands and pass it on to others. Frequently, from other sources, staph lands on our skin and we don’t get sick. However, staph is the cause of boils and of many other skin infections. If it penetrates through the skin, it can infect deep organs like the heart. When it gets into the blood, it can be deadly. Precautions consist in frequent but not obsessive hand-washing, regular changing of washcloths and towels, and cleansing of all cuts and scratches.

In the early days of antibiotics — the 1940s and ’50s — penicillin killed staph with ease. However, it’s a wily germ and learned how to outsmart penicillin. Scientists created a new penicillin, methicillin. Staph then developed ways of escaping the action of methicillin. It became MRSA, methicillin-resistant staph. We still have antibiotics that work against it, but they can’t always get the job done. Blood and organ infections with the germ are often life-threatening. The alternative antibiotics used for treatment of MRSA depend, in part, on a person’s healthy immune system to contribute to the conquest of this formidable foe. At older ages, the immune system isn’t as strong as it once was. I am truly sorry for your and your family’s loss. The battle with MRSA is also a battle against the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. Bacteria become resistant to them when they’re prescribed for conditions that don’t warrant their use, like colds.

Starting to notice how many people are talking about the over use of antibiotics?  And washing one’s hands?

Cut back on antibiotics to save human lives?

Here’s a scary quote:

“We may have strains of staph arising now where there is essentially no antibiotic left that can treat them. We may be moving into what has been called the ‘post-antibiotic era.’ What that will do is, in many ways, move medicine back 50 years.”

Here’s the full article.

SaveAntibiotics.org