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CDC Steps Up Efforts to Fight MRSA Infections

Drug-resistant germ can harm even those outside of hospitals

September 10, 2008

• 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

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, has become a serious infection threat in many hospitals. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched a national campaign to teach parents how to keep their children safe from it at home.

MRSA, a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics, has been in the news because it can cause severe infections in health care settings, such as hospitals. But parents may not be aware that it can also cause skin infections in otherwise healthy people who haven't recently been hospitalized.

The National MRSA Education Initiative is aimed at highlighting specific actions parents can take to protect themselves and their families. CDC estimates that Americans visit doctors more than 12 million times per year for skin infections typical of those caused by staph bacteria. In some areas of the country, more than half of the skin infections are MRSA.

"Well-informed parents are a child's best defense against MRSA and other skin infections," said Dr. Rachel Gorwitz, a pediatrician and medical epidemiologist with CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. "Recognizing the signs and receiving treatment in the early stages of a skin infection reduces the chances of the infection becoming severe or spreading."

MRSA is spread by having direct contact with another person's infection, sharing personal items such as towels or razors that have touched infected skin, or by touching surfaces contaminated with MRSA.

To prevent MRSA, parents can teach their kids about the signs and symptoms of MRSA skin infections, help children keep their cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage and encourage good hand washing and general hygiene.

Most staph skin infections, including those caused by MRSA, appear as a bump or infected area on the skin that may be red, swollen, painful, warm to the touch or containing pus or other drainage. These signs may also be accompanied by a fever. It′s especially important to contact a doctor if anyone in your family has a skin infection and a fever.

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