In USA - Antibiotic-resistant Staph Outbreak -

[scotrace]

School kids are little petrie dishes. Once your kids start school, the whole family gets sick like clockwork.

Howevr, this is a little different (NYT article, might have to sign up to get). A strain of Staph that is found outside the usual venue of hospitals. It resists treatment, and is often fatal.

You may want to be especially careful to remind your kids to wash wash wash.

Excerpt:

Health and education officials have reported that staph infections, including the serious MRSA strain, have spread through schools nationwide in recent weeks.

MRSA is a strain of staph bacteria that does not respond to penicillin or related antibiotics, though it can be treated with other drugs. The infection can be spread by skin-to-skin contact or through sharing an item, like a towel or a piece of sports equipment, that has been used by an infected person, particularly one with an open wound.

The news of staff infections spreading through schools coincides with a report by doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that nearly 19,000 people had died in the United States in 2005 after an MRSA infection.

 

[Paisley]

Might be a good idea to seal any cuts with skin glue (it's sold alongside bandaids) and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.

 

[nobodyspecial]

MRSA is nothing new, it's been around for a long time. MRSA is getting a lot of attention since the kid died, but it's really not much of a story. The bacteria causing MRSA is everywhere, just use good hygene. My family had MRSA several years ago, then it went away just as quickly as it came. None of us needed a hospital stay. Like most diseases, MRSA will kill off the elderly and the weak.

 

[zaika]

oh my God AmateisGirl! i'm so sorry you and your husband had to deal with that...how frightening. i'm glad he's okay now, though.

 

[AmateisGal]

oh my God AmateisGirl! i'm so sorry you and your husband had to deal with that...how frightening. i'm glad he's okay now, though.

Thanks, Zaika. He has one very nasty scar, though! It really scared us - although the hospital bill nearly made me faint dead away!

 

[Dinerman]

My high school was the first to have it in the area, way back in july or thereabouts.

 

[MaryDeluxe]

We have a case at the high school where I work. Getting a MRSA infection is really the least of my worries!lol

Teach your kids to wash their hands and give them a bottle of hand sanatizer to carry with them in their book bags.

 

[scotrace]

The local school system has a tub of that stuff (dispenser) on just about every wall in the buildings.

 

[Tomasso]

Once your kids start school, the whole family gets sick like clockwork.

Makes a case for boarding schools.

 

[nobodyspecial]

You can't get away from nasty bacteria, it is everywhere; boarding schools, public schools, home schools. Worst places are hospitals.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Generally full of elderly and weak people. = Reason for concern.

bk

 

[Ecuador Jim]

The MRSA scare is similar to the Strep-A infection that spread across the west about ten years ago. The symptomology was similar, a small scratch that opens the body to a raging infection in hours.

In Colorado, some patients were having progressive amputations in an attempt to save the person. They were fighting the infection by putting the victim into a hyperbaric chamber to rob the infection of a favorable environment.

Scary stuff if it happens to you. Most of us carry MRSA in a dormant state.

There is a school of thought that believes that we are over-protecting our kids with anti-bacterial hand washes, etc.

Scotrace's comment about kids being little petri dishes is true; it's also what helps boost our immune systems. Not always pleasant, but sometimes necessary.

Before immunizations for mumps, and other childhood diseases, whoever caught the mumps in the neighborhood became the instant playmate for everyone else. Our moms wanted us to catch all that stuff early so we'd be protected...ugh.

 

[Miss Brill]

It is all over Middle Tennessee.

Personally, I blame all these diseases on nurses who wear their scrubs home from work & then go to grocery stores and other places without changing. Yuck! I see them all the time blundering around Kroger.

 

[pigeon toe]

Teach your kids to wash their hands and give them a bottle of hand sanatizer to carry with them in their book bags.

We have to be careful about that though because some hand santizers contain a chemical (sorry, I'm blanking on the name, but I heard about it in the Scientific American weekly podcast) that acts as an antibiotic, which can actually increase the amount of antibiotic-resistant bugs floating around in the world.

I checked my hand sanitizer when I first heard about it (I use Bath & Body Works brand) and it didn't have that ingredient, so it's apparently OK to use.

 

[Miss Brill]

Plain tea tree oil makes a good hand sanitizer. It smells kind of strong though. JASON makes a tea tree gel.

For the JASON gel:
Ingredients:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aqua (purified water), Hamamelis Virginiana Distillate (witch hazel), Vegetable Glycerin, Melaleuca Alternifolia Leaf Oil (tea tree), Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Gel (aloe vera), Oleth 20, Calendula Officinalis Flower Extract (marigold), Arnica Montana Flower Extract (arnica), Centaurea Cyanus Extract (cornflower), Panthenol (vitamin B5), Potassium Carbomer, Menthol (Natural), Dipentene (limonene), Cymbopogon Nardus Oil (citronella), Arginine, Benzyl Alcohol, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Annatto, Chlorophylin Copper Complex, Guaiazulene (azulene)