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CDC Slow to Act Against Hospital Infections, Critic Charges

November 14, 2006

• Public Citizen Proposes Basic Safety Reforms • Medicare Penalizes Hospitals for Treating Disadvantaged Patients • CDC Steps Up Efforts to Fight MRSA Infections • FDA Clears First Quick Test For 'Super Staph' • Drug-Resistant Bugs Growing, Study Finds • CDC Slow to Act Against Hospital Infections, Critic Charges • Study: Cell Phones Reduce Hospital Errors • Hospitals Slow to Improve Patient Safety • Hospital Sloppiness Costing Taxpayers Billions • States Take Aim at Hospital Infections • Hospital Computer Keyboards Can Spread Germs, Study Finds • Medicare Launches Hospital Comparison Site

Hospital infections account for an estimated 100,000 deaths every year, more than the toll taken by AIDS, yet the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has chosen not to recommend a test that could stop the spread of a dangerous strain of staph.

CDC has recommended voluntary blood testing of all patients to stem the spread of AIDS, but so far has decided not to recommend a test to detect MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

The CDC guidelines to prevent hospital infections, released last month, conspicuously omit universal testing of patients for MRSA, says Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and the founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

That's unfortunate, says, McCaughey, because research shows that the only way to prevent MRSA infections is to identify which patients bring the bacteria into the hospital.

Also, she said, the MRSA test costs no more than the H.I.V. test and is less invasive, a simple nasal or skin swab.

Staph bacteria are the most prevalent infection-causing germs in most hospitals, and increasingly these infections cannot be cured with ordinary antibiotics. It's estimated that 60 percent of staph infections, primarily MRSA, are now drug resistant, up from 2 percent in 1974.

Some people carry MRSA germs in their noses or on their skin without realizing it.

The bacteria do not cause infection unless they get inside the body -- usually via a catheter, a ventilator, or an incision or other open wound.

Once admitted to a hospital, patients who carry MRSA shed the germs on bedrails, wheelchairs, stethoscopes and other surfaces, where MRSA can live for many hours.

In this country, MRSA hospital infections increased 32-fold from 1976 to 2003, according to the CDC.

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