MRSA bill takes heat at Capitol
March 16, 2008
From the local Missouri news. It looks like the hospitals don’t like the idea of being watched when it comes to MRSA.
Infection-tracking measure bothers health professionals.
Published Sunday, March 16, 2008
MRSA is responsible for more deaths than AIDS in the United States. The so-called superbug also is causing a stir in Missouri as legislators and consumer advocacy groups sound an alarm over MRSA and health professionals accuse them of playing politics and using murky science.
Rep. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, recently abandoned an attempt to list MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – as a “reportable condition” that would require notification to the state Department of Health and Senior Services, saying he was forced to “water down” a bill he introduced.
“When you buy meat at the grocery, you know it’s prepared at a factory where people have to wear a hairnet and walk through bleach and all sorts of protections,” Schaaf said. “You know, we don’t have that at the hospitals.”
Schaaf is one of a handful of physicians in the Missouri House and a champion of 2004 legislation that expanded reporting of infections in the state. His pending bill, HB 1546, would have required testing for MRSA in patients and doctors, isolation of infected patients and public reporting of MRSA hospital infection rates.
Eddie Hedrick, the emerging infections coordinator for the state, saw several problems with the bill. Hedrick and Linda Johnson, University of Missouri Health Care infection control manager, criticized it in testimony last month at the Capitol, causing Schaaf to pull controversial aspects.
“There’s a lot of politics involved in this whole thing,” said Hedrick, who contends media reports have been “drawing cloudy lines” between MRSA that is deadly and commonplace types of MRSA. He said there are two types of MRSA bugs:
● Health-care associated MRSA first appeared 50 years ago and occurs mostly in hospitals or nursing homes among patients with weakened immune systems.
● Community associated MRSA emerged in the last 10 years and occurs mostly among young people who spend time in close quarters and practice lax hygiene. CAMRSA outbreaks are generally on the skin and result in boils that typically disappear without treatment but can be deadly on rare occasions.
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This is disease that needs much more control and awareness!! A close family member was diagnosed w/MRSA last week here in Colo Sps CO and is in isolation at a local hospital. I’m reading as much as possible and asking medical personnel of how to control/cleanse our home environment. No firm answers–some staff say skin touching o.k., others say only with rubber gloves. So much disparity among even the professionals. A bit of background– my family member became very ill a week ago; he’d had hip replacement 5 years ago and the prosthesis area was attacked by MRSA with no external redness, only severe pain in the hip joint area. His temp was 104, BP very low, when we were admitted to the hospital after seeing the doctor at his office–all persons we came in contact were exposed! That scares me senseless to think we may have caused a very sick person to contact a bacteria that he/she can’t fight off! I even have a friend who’s on chemo and I blindly exposed her at a small social function! Please alarm the public and I’m 100% for alerting the CDC and Dept of Health and Senior Services. How do I assist in this effort?