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Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

Why is it that the places we go to for health care still do not understand MRSA and how to better prevent it. When a person is sick we go to a hospital to get better and not worse. Hospitals need to be held to higher standards as this article suggests.

Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

From the Independent.ie News
Saturday February 02 2008

The distraught family of a civil rights activist who died in hospital have called on the Government to act on the MRSA crisis.

Barbara Forde (67), died on December 3, 2006, just over a month after entering Beaumont Hospital for an abdominal operation. An inquest found yesterday that MRSA was a contributing factor in her decline after the operation.

Her brother Kieran Forde said after the inquest: “It is now up to the politicians to do something about this”.

Ms Forde, from Dollymount Road in Clontarf in Dublin, rapidly deteriorated after contracting post-operative pneumonia, MRSA pneumonia (hospital acquired) and blood clots in her lungs after the operation.

Barbara’s brother Dermot Forde, a practising vet, attacked the Government and health system claiming meat processing plants have stricter hygiene standards than Irish hospitals.

He said: “There is more bio-security in terms of access to chicken farms then there is in terms of access to intensive care post-operative units”.

Risk

Dr Brian Farrell, Dublin City Coroner, found that the MRSA pneumonia along with her other conditions: “constituted significant risk factors for the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)”. He found she ultimately died from ARDS.

Mr Declan Buckley, representing Beaumont Hospital, established that MRSA was only one of a number of factors that lead to Ms Forde’s death.

In cross examining Mr Henry Osbourne, Ms Forde’s hospital consultant, it was established that Ms Forde had MRSA on November 9 2006, which was hospital acquired, but it was treated and seemed to have cleared by November 13.

The coroner accepted these findings but suggested that the MRSA contracted did not help Ms Forde at that time and Mr Osbourne agreed.

Mr Osbourne later said: “Anything that was going to affect Ms Forde’s lung function post -operation at that time was going to be a significant factor”.

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